A New Mexico court ruled Wednesday that Meta must pay $25 billion in penalties for giving the data of Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica, a firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, and for deceiving the public in the matter.
New Mexico’s attorney general sued the company in 2021, when it was already known that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had harvested the personal data of 87 million Facebook users.
The court found that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, knowingly lied to users of the service about matters such as access to their personal data, its handling of hate speech and other issues related to company policy.
Meta’s management knew that companies such as Cambridge Analytica had access to users’ personal data, and it also tolerated harmful content and hate speech when doing so benefited the company, the ruling states.
The court stressed in its ruling that the size of the penalty reflects the “extraordinary number” of violations the company committed and its “systematic and knowing” deception of the public.
The money Meta is to pay in New Mexico will go to the state’s education system.
Reuters notes that half a year earlier, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta had lied to the public about issues such as the safety of young users of Facebook, Instagram and the WhatsApp messaging app. It ordered the company to pay a $567 million penalty and to put in place mechanisms protecting young people from dangerous content on those platforms.
The matter of Cambridge Analytica obtaining data during Trump’s first election campaign became a major scandal. The firm used information obtained from Facebook to build a program designed to predict voters’ decisions and influence them.
The company has been sued by, among others, British authorities, the District of Columbia, consumer protection agencies and several state attorneys general.
New Mexico, however, is the only state that has secured a penalty in court. Other states opted in August for a settlement that combined the cases concerning data access and the protection of young people, under which the company paid a $459 million penalty.
Meta’s lawyers announced in early October that they would appeal the ruling if a financial penalty was imposed in New Mexico. (PAP)
