New Mexico jury rules Meta misled residents on privacy in Cambridge Analytica case

A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, found on Friday that Meta misled residents of the state about how it handled their personal data and enforced its policies on hate speech and misinformation, Reuters reported. The verdict closes the first phase of a case filed by New Mexico's attorney general in 2021, three years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

What the jury decided

Jurors found that 26 of the 29 statements identified by the state were misleading, including comments about user data, hate speech and misinformation. They rejected the state's claims about Meta's efforts to remove harmful content and its fact-checking practices. The two-week trial in Santa Fe centred on statements made by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and in company blog posts.

Jurors also found more than 43 million violations, calculated from the number of people the misleading statements affected. Judge Francis Mathew will now decide the civil penalty; under New Mexico law he can award up to $5,000 per violation. Attorney General Raúl Torrez said his office is still evaluating how much to seek but will push for the maximum, and will ask the judge to order Meta to correct past misstatements and to audit the way it manages user data.

Meta's response

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the verdict and would continue to defend itself "against efforts to distort our record." The spokesperson said Meta's platforms are forums for free expression and that the company has a First Amendment right to manage them. At trial, Meta's lawyers argued the state's evidence was outdated and that the statements it cited were cherry-picked snippets that ignored context; Meta also denied selling users' information.

The Cambridge Analytica case

The lawsuit grew out of 2018 reports that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that worked on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. New Mexico argued that Facebook sold user data to outside parties and allowed harmful content to spread when it benefited the company, claims Meta denied.

The verdict is the second against Meta in Santa Fe this year. In March, a jury found the company misled users about young people's safety on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and ordered $375 million in civil penalties; a second phase added $567 million for a state teen mental health fund and new safeguards. Meta has settled similar Cambridge Analytica claims with other states for $459 million, but New Mexico and Florida stayed out of that deal, which is why this case went to trial.