Judge orders Meta to pay $25 billion in trial related to 8-year-old data privacy scandal

A New Mexico state court has ordered Facebook-parent company Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty following a long legal battle stemming from the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal from nearly a decade ago. The judgment, revealed in a court filing on Wednesday (October 21), follows a September verdict by a jury in a Santa Fe courthouse.

Jurors found the social media giant liable for deceiving New Mexico residents regarding how it gathers and safeguards personal data, as well as how it stops harmful content from spreading across its platforms. The jury determined that Meta committed more than 43 million individual violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, each subject to a statutory civil fine of up to $5,000.

However, the final penalty amount was left to judicial discretion. The ruling revealed that while the state was initially awarded $219.5 billion, the court reduced the ultimate penalty to $25 billion.

In his filing, New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew delivered a rebuke of the company's past actions and internal practices, arguing that the maximum fine per violation was fully justified.“The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act - $5,000 per violation found by the jury,” Judge Mathew wrote. Judge Mathew also ordered that the penalty will accrue interest at an annual rate of 15% until the judgment is settled in full.

Internal inquiry was ‘Willfully Ineffective’The ruling pointed out that Facebook failed to live up to its public commitments following the 2018 Cambridge Analytica revelations, in which the political consultancy improperly gathered data belonging to an estimated 87 million users. Judge Mathew concluded that the tech firm “did not conduct the comprehensive investigation that it promised.”Meta previously attempted to clear away nationwide litigation tied to the Cambridge Analytica fallout.

In August, the tech giant agreed to an overarching $17 billion multi-state settlement with a coalition of state attorneys general in a broader federal lawsuit centered on child safety and mental health. However, as New Mexico chose not to join that nationwide pact, the state's independent Cambridge Analytica lawsuit proceeded directly to trial in September.

The original complaint was initiated in 2021 by former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, with current Attorney General Raúl Torrez directing the courtroom trial to its conclusion. You use AI every day.

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Key quotes

• “did not conduct the comprehensive investigation that it promised.”