Meta has suffered a legal defeat in the US state of New Mexico, where a jury found the Facebook parent company liable for misleading users over data privacy and free speech protections in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, opening the door to potential multibillion-dollar penalties.
A Privacy Breach Returns to Court
The legal reckoning unfolding in Santa Fe traces back to an eight-year-old privacy disaster. In March 2018, reports revealed that the personal data of roughly 87 million Facebook users had been harvested through a survey developed by a data researcher. Without obtaining user consent, these profiles were shared with Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct analysis firm. The data eventually found its way into the hands of political operatives, including the campaign team of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and supporters of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
While Meta previously paid a $5 billion fine to the US government in 2019 to end investigations, legal challenges continued. The state of New Mexico brought a lawsuit against the tech giant in 2021, shifting the battlefield beyond data harvesting into the territory of platform governance and free expression.
New Mexico Jury Finds Liability Across 34 Counts
During the trial, jurors in New Mexico examined 34 specific questions regarding Meta’s operational practices and statements to the public. Bloomberg reported from the courtroom that the jury found the company liable on the majority of those counts, establishing between 1,3 and 2,1 million individual violations based on the number of affected users. Penalties can scale up to 5.000 Dollar per individual violation.
With liability established by the jury, the final determination of financial penalties now rests with Judge Francis Mathew. Because the per-violation multipliers apply across millions of affected users, Meta faces potential fines reaching into the billions of dollars.
The Free Speech and Whistleblower Dimension
The New Mexico litigation focused on internal platform moderation policies and freedom of expression. The state’s 2021 legal action was fueled by disclosures originating from a whistleblower report. Those documents indicated that Meta had operated systems exempting select high-profile accounts from rules regarding allowed content on the platform.
The jury decided that Meta misled users with regard to data protection and freedom of speech.
Meta Defends Platform Governance Strategy
Meta issued a pushback against the jury’s verdict, signaling intentions to continue to defend itself against the allegations. The company maintained that it operates under protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. “The company has the right to operate its platforms in a manner it deems appropriate in the interest of users, which includes prioritizing free speech, protecting user information, and giving users control over their data,” representatives for Meta stated following the verdict.
As Judge Mathew prepares to calculate the final financial penalties, the ruling underscores the ongoing vulnerability of big tech platforms to state-level enforcement actions long after federal regulatory settlements have closed.
