Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion for Deceiving Users About Privacy On Facebook

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. State Attorney General Raul Torrez called it "one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history." While Meta plans to appeal the ruling, the funds that are to be collected will go toward state education spending. The Associated Press reports: Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election. Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook in a nationwide case, but New Mexico chose to take the social media company to court on its own. [...] During the trial, jurors assessed whether Facebook misled users about privacy and content moderation 34 separate times. State prosecutors, though, argued Facebook's statements deceived the entire population of New Mexico and extended beyond social media users.

In the end, jurors agreed with this premise and found Facebook liable for 2.1 million violations on certain counts, bringing the total number of violations to over 43 million. Facebook's attorneys have argued in subsequent court filings that the state's consumer protection laws don't apply to people in New Mexico who weren't using the platform at the time. [...] In one of the few wins for the defense, jurors found the state didn't prove that Facebook made false claims about removing harmful content, including misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state said the company favored certain accounts and allowed for violent or inaccurate content to proliferate. Attorney Randi McGinn said in her closing argument for the state that Facebook profited off harmful content, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied during his video deposition. Zuckerberg said the company has to carefully balance freedom of speech with content moderation. Attorneys for Facebook said the company has adapted its policies since the state's lawsuit was filed in 2021 and that it removes 99% of content that violates standards.

Communists

[greytree]

That's New *America*, you, you, socialists.

Do you people want Che Guevara to win ?!

Re:Communists

[kertaamo]

Americans are so funny. They think civilised behaviour is communist.

I'm all for free speech and all. We should all be able to express our opinions our likes and dislikes etc, But that does not mean I want a world full of lies and misinformation.

Well, Americans would be funny if the effects of their madness did not put us all in danger.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

Also if you say you believe in free speech, don't shut down people immediately for speaking out against you.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

You know there are varying degrees of the political spectrum and not extreme left or extreme right?

Re:

[Local ID10T]

Inconceivable!

Re: Communists

[getuid()]

There's also extreme shitty?

Re:

[Pascoea]

Ok, that was a solid troll.

Re:

[gardyloo]

Don't worry, greytree. I understood that this is heavily ironic. Sorry you're getting the clueless responses.

Re:

[quenda]

Don't worry, greytree. I understood that this is heavily ironic. Sorry you're getting the clueless responses.

With all the subtlety of a SJW or alt-right youtuber. Clueless-in, clueless out.

Lets start by acknowledging that Facebook is evil (despite cool stuff like pytorch and llama).
New Mexico has only 2 million people, and $25B is more than enough to pay all their debts and unfunded liabilities. Brilliant move!
But extrapolation $25B on a per capita basis to other states applying similar taxes and you get a total of four trillion dollars [evil laugh] . Is that sustainable?

Even Meta does not have that m

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

New Mexico has only 2 million people, and $25B is more than enough to pay all their debts and unfunded liabilities. Brilliant move! But extrapolation $25B on a per capita basis to other states applying similar taxes and you get a total of four trillion dollars [evil laugh] . Is that sustainable?

You ask that question as though driving Facebook to extinction and putting fear in the hearts of the rest of the parasite class would be a bad thing.

As for myself, I'd love for that sustainability question to be answered empirically.

Re: Communists

[greytree]

Outing the clueless since 1998.

Re:

[whitroth]

a) Che was murdered by the local government, with help torturing him provided by the CIA.
b) Well, given that the US was setting up and supporting nasty dictators, yes, I do want him to win.

Geez what is this world coming to?

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

That's worse than the EU, quick, cuckerberg, take it to the scotus while it still accepts bribes in kind.

Can't believe he cited free speech.

[Puls4r]

You're the 'biggest' social network in the world - and you DON'T have to provide free speech. You could easily remove the bots, the hatred, the fake medicine. You choose not to because profit is the bigger motive than society. Facebook is a cancer and deserves to be destroyed for the way they've acted as a custodian to the power they've amassed.

Re:Can't believe he cited free speech.

[pla]

No argument, but none of that was on trial. They didn't lose because they largely ignore hate speech, misinformation, bots, etc - All of which are basically legal except in very specific contexts (licensed professional advice, incitement to violence). They lost because they lied about user privacy and their efforts at moderation.

This isn't apologia, but it's an important distinction to keep in mind. The first amendment is an effective defense of the content itself; it's not a defense against deceiving their customers and regulators. So why am I writing this? Because Zuck's appeal to 1A is merely another lie - Whether this stands or is eventually reduced on appeal, he's already spinning the PR away from the blunt fact of "we lost because lied", to the far squishier "Meh, moderation is hard, so sue us - Oh wait, you did LOL".

Money Scam

[Princeofcups]

Every time a state says new funds will go toward education (i.e. State Lotteries, State Road Tolls) they immediately lower the existing funding to the equivalent amount. In other words, if NM actually gets the $25b, they will quietly remove $25b from the funding for next year, and give it all to pork barrel.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Pork barrel? Nah it'll be the green chile barrel, and I'd be OK with that.

Maybe the could fund replacement emergency spare tires for all. After all you're not really meant to put 100k miles on one.

Re:

[PPH]

Sounds legit. In a way, they are funding education of a sort. Learn what happens when you wave large piles of cash under politicians noses.

"Wisdom comes through suffering." -- Aeschylus

Re:

[ChrisMaple]

Don't forget that the teachers' union gets a share of the scam.

Cautiously Optimistic

[Grady Martin]

I'll believe it when I see it.

The bar has moved

[hdyoung]

Since Cambridge Analytica. Back then, the idea that a political outfit would scrape a million identities from the internet was utterly infuriating and outrageous. Nowadays? That sort of abuse happens every 30 seconds. AI has made it even worse. The entire internet is getting constantly scraped. By basically everybody. Im not defending Facebook, but standards have changed.

Facebook's attorneys have argued

[mrbester]

...in subsequent court filings that the state's consumer protection laws don't apply to people in New Mexico who weren't using the platform at the time.

I hope that argument was treated with all the derision it deserved. If anything, protection laws should apply more stringently for those who weren't using the platform but had their data harvested covertly with no means of denying our otherwise opting out of its unlawful collection.

Finally, we can afford ad-blocking classes

[Sloppy]

I love the idea of Facebook money being used to teach kids how to block advertisements. $25B should be enough to teach every single kid in New Mexico how to do it, going forward forever, as a permanent addition to public school curriculum.

I was going to suggest that maybe we could even use a tiny portion of the money to establish a state DNS server that blackholes the adservers the way pi-hole does. Then kids stuck running proprietary "apps," instead of accessing things through their Manifest-V2-compatible web browser, wouldn't have to install their own DNS server.

But then I realized the aforementioned ad-blocking curriculum ought to have resulted in every kid building their own pi-hole at school anyway, so a state pi-hole is unnecessary.

Title correction:

[Sebby]

Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion for Deceiving Users About Privacy On Facebook

"Privacy Rapists Meta[stasize] Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion for Raping Users' Privacy On Facebook"

There FTFY.

Second large judgement against FB

[stabiesoft]

New Mexico is on a roll. Not Cal, not NY, but lil ol NM. Good on them. Show the other states how it is done. I hope the judgement stands, and it should based on what little I've read. I am not a lawyer though. FB broke the statute and should have to pay. To me, no different from that 250K infringement thing some consumers have been hit with for downloading a movie or song.

Re:

[stabiesoft]

Not sure which state is left, but the summary states it, 48 states settled for 18B. NM got them for 25B singularly. As I said before, NM is on a roll doing better than other AG's. Surprising as I'd expect the large state AG's to be better at this stuff. And now I see they may end up getting the dirt on Epstein as well. There is a Epstein property in NM with dead bodies buried, so they have standing for sure. And they may have some maids/grounds people etc in NM that have knowledge that were on the property