New Mexico jurors found Meta misled residents: 26 of 29 statements on user data, hate speech and misinformation were misleading, with more than 43 million violations. A judge will set penalties, up to $5,000 per violation; the state says it will push for the maximum.
The 2021 lawsuit followed reports that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. The state challenged Meta statements about data sharing and its hate-speech and misinformation policies; jurors rejected claims about statements on harmful-content removals and fact-checking.
Meta said it disagreed with the verdict and would continue to defend itself. Its lawyers argued the challenged statements were taken out of context, and the company denied selling users’ information. The state will also ask the judge for changes that could include corrections to past statements and an audit of Meta’s user-data management.
