New Mexico jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users in Cambridge Analytica case

On Friday a jury in New Mexico found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy protections on its platform. It now falls to the judge to decide how much the company must pay, with lawyers for the state asking for the maximum penalty of $5,000 per violation.

The two-week trial in Santa Fe centered on claims that Facebook concealed the scale of a data breach from its users. It began with a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles and sold it to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for targeted advertising. The now-defunct firm's clients included Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

More than two million violations

Jurors sided with prosecutors, concluding that Facebook's failure to protect users' data affected New Mexico's entire population of more than two million people. They also found the company had misled the public about investigations into data brokers after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In total, the violations numbered over two million.

"For years, Facebook operated as if the rules that apply to everyone else didn't apply to them. Today, a jury of New Mexicans said otherwise," said state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, calling the verdict historic.

Facebook's defense argued the state's evidence was outdated, noting that in five years prosecutors had found only one additional instance of a breach. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the verdict and would keep defending itself against efforts to "distort our records." Meta stressed that free-speech issues loomed large in the case and that it has a First Amendment right to run its platforms as it sees fit.

Part of a larger wave of lawsuits

In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a multistate lawsuit over child safety. Buried in the 130-page settlement was a clause releasing Meta from future liability tied to the Cambridge Analytica breach — leaving New Mexico as the only state to take that dispute to trial. Florida was the only other state not to sign, saying the deal was not tough enough.

Earlier this year New Mexico had already won judgments totaling $942 million from Meta in a two-phase trial over protections for minors. The court ordered the company to adopt new safeguards, including age-verification technology and time limits on its platforms.

"Let this be a warning to every technology company doing business in our state," Torrez said. "If you lie to New Mexicans about how you use their data, we will find out, and we will hold you accountable."

Source: Hacker News