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Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal
· Confirmed
In Short: A New Mexico court ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $25 billion in penalties on Wednesday, stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that began nearly a decade ago.
A New Mexico court ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $25 billion in penalties on Wednesday, stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that began nearly a decade ago.
Judge Francis Mathew ruled that Meta violated New Mexico's unfair practices act more than 43 million times, with each violation carrying a civil penalty of up to $5,000. The judge ultimately set the penalty at $25 billion.
The scandal involved Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, improperly accessing the information of 87 million Facebook users. This raised serious questions about Facebook's data handling practices.
The case proceeded to trial in September after New Mexico was not part of the $17 billion settlement Meta reached with a coalition of state attorneys general in a separate federal case.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez emphasized that the penalty demonstrates that big tech companies will face consequences for violations.
Meta's chief legal officer, C.J. Mathew, stated that the penalty order shows that violations carry real consequences.
The ruling comes at a time when Meta is expanding its AI products, making this one of the largest state-level privacy judgments ever entered against a technology company.
The case was brought after Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook data to generate targeted political ads during the 2016 election season.
Jury deliberations lasted weeks, reviewing internal Meta communications, public statements, and testimony before reaching their verdict.
The $25 billion penalty is large enough to rank among the biggest corporate penalties in American history tied to consumer data practices, surpassing Meta’s own $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.
What's confirmed
- 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 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.
- "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online." Meta previously resolved various Cambridge Analytica-derived data privacy lawsuits across the nation as part of an overarching August settlement of nearly $17 billion with a coalition of state attorneys general in a separate federal case related to child safety and mental health.
- Although the jury concluded that Meta had more than 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.
- Last month, a jury in Santa Fe found that Meta was liable for misleading citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data.
- New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez weighed in and said that the penalty shows that big tech companies who commit violations will receive consequences.
- The penalty was cut from $219.5 billion after a jury found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's unfair practices act New Mexico District Judge Francis Joseph Mathew ordered Meta $META, the parent company of Facebook, to hand over $25 billion as a penalty over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which gave rise to the state’s data privacy lawsuit, according to CNBC.
- The jury found that Meta had over 43 million violations of the state’s unfair practices act, according to CNBC.
- Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election.
- A judge has ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation on Facebook.
- New Mexico's lawsuit argued that Facebook generally misled consumers about its data privacy practices, as well as its efforts to moderate misinformation and hate speech.
- Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws for making misleading public statements about how it handled users’ personal data.
What's still developing
- In 2022, the social media giant agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit that also sprang from the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal that kicked off in 2018.
- Mathew said in the filing that "Facebook did not conduct the comprehensive investigation that it promised" following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
- A New Mexico judge later directed Meta to contribute $567 million to an abatement fund, concluding that the company's conduct amounted to a public nuisance, according to CNBC.
- The case stemmed from a 2021 complaint in the wake of the revelations a few years earlier that UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millions of Facebook accounts to pinpoint messages that would resonate with voters leading up to President Donald Trump’s first election.
- To refresh your memory, the scandal involved Cambridge Analytica — a political firm financed in part by pro-Trump benefactors — harvesting private data from tens of millions of Facebook users, which was eventually conveyed to members of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and used for political targeting.
- Meta has been sentenced to pay a staggering $25 billion for consumer protection infractions in New Mexico.
- “For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law,” he said in a statement.
- “Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Mathew wrote.