A court in the US state of New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in a case over misleading Facebook users about the protection of personal data. The proceedings are linked to the scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica, which gained access to the information of millions of users without their consent. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
The ruling on the size of the fine was issued on October 21 by Judge Francis Matthew. He found the sum of more than $219 billion justified but reduced it to $25 billion. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the decision one of the largest in US history in a case brought by an individual state against a company.
«Facebook's unlawful actions — committed over many years and systematically broadcast to the public — go to the very core of Facebook's basic business practices,» Judge Francis Matthew wrote in the ruling.
New Mexico authorities filed the lawsuit in 2021. The case was prompted by information that the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had collected the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app.
The company worked on Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016 and used the information obtained to build voter profiles and target political advertising.
State authorities argued that Meta misled users about third parties' access to their data. The claims also concerned the company's statements about combating hate speech and disinformation.
On September 25, a jury found 26 of the 29 statements by Meta and its leadership under consideration to be misleading. They established more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection law.
New Mexico law provides for a fine of up to $5,000 per violation. According to Torrez, the recovered funds should go to the state's school system.
The company intends to appeal the decision. Meta's chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said he was confident of victory in the appeals court.
«This decision, as well as the attorney general's approach to enforcing it, make doing business in the state of New Mexico practically impossible,» Mahoney said.
In court documents, Meta asked that the fine be limited to $3.45 billion. The company argued that it does not sell user data and that state authorities had not proven that specific consumers were misled. Meta also stated that a multibillion-dollar fine could violate its constitutional rights.
The amount imposed became the largest fine for the company in a case related to Cambridge Analytica. In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion over the same scandal.