A New Mexico judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty for misleading Facebook users about data privacy.
The judgment is related to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal from nearly 10 years ago.
The jury found that Meta had more than 40 million violates of New Mexico’s unfair practices act.
CNBC reported:
Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties by a New Mexico court on Wednesday as part of a data privacy case that stemmed from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal from nearly a decade ago.
The penalty, revealed in a court filing, comes after a jury in a Santa Fe courthouse found in September the social media giant liable for misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data and prevents harmful information from flourishing on its services.
Although the jury concluded that Meta had over 43 million violations of the state’s unfair practices act, with each transgression carrying a civil penalty as high as $5,000, a New Mexico judge was responsible for determining the ultimate fine. The Wednesday filing showed that the state was awarded $219.5 billion, but the penalty was ultimately reduced to $25 billion.
“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,” New Mexico district court judge Francis Mathew wrote in the filing.
The judge added that interest on the penalty shall accrue at the rate of 15% each year until the fine is paid off in full.
In August, a court ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund over child harm.
New Mexico Judge Bryan Biedscheid compared Meta to air pollution and called it a “public nuisance.”
“Although Meta is not alone in this regard, its social media platforms are a significant contributing factor to the current mental health crisis among New Mexico’s youth established by the substantial evidence in this case,” Judge Bryan Biedscheid wrote in the ruling over the summer, CNBC reported.
In March, a Los Angeles, California, jury found that Meta and YouTube were liable for a teen’s mental health and awarded her $3 million in damages.
The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified as KGM or “Kaley,” said she became addicted to Meta’s app Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child.
KGM said she developed body dysmorphia and had suicidal ideations because of her addiction to the social media platforms.
Legal experts said March’s landmark decision against the social media giants is comparable to a previous settlement agreement with “Big Tobacco.”
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