New Mexico Jury Finds Meta Misled Residents on Data Privacy and Misinformation
The verdict follows a 2021 state lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica data practices that New Mexico declined to settle.
A New Mexico jury has found Meta Platforms in violation of the state's Unfair Practices Act, ruling that the company misled residents regarding its data privacy protections and misinformation policies, according to a report by Engadget citing Reuters.
The verdict concludes a trial stemming from a lawsuit filed by New Mexico in 2021 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where third parties harvested data from roughly 50 million Facebook users without explicit consent to target political advertisements during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
New Mexico's complaint alleged that Meta misrepresented what third-party applications could do with user information, maintained vague and unclear privacy settings, and falsely asserted that hate speech rules were applied equally across the platform. In court, Meta's defense acknowledged past missteps in handling privacy and misinformation but denied that the company sold user data or profited from hate speech.
The presiding judge has not yet determined the financial penalty Meta will face. While Meta previously entered an $18 billion multi-state settlement across 47 states regarding child safety concerns—which included $459 million to resolve existing Cambridge Analytica litigation—New Mexico and Florida opted out of the Cambridge Analytica portion, allowing New Mexico's case to proceed to a jury verdict.
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