Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal may feel like very old news. But the consequences are still arriving, and the latest comes with a $25 billion price tag.
Reuters reports that a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties after a jury found that Facebook misled consumers about its data practices and its handling of hate speech and misinformation. Meta says it expects to win on appeal.
This case is about more than information ending up in the wrong hands. It concerns what Facebook told people about who could access their information, how much control users had, and how the company enforced its own rules.
What Facebook told its users
In September, jurors found that the company and its leadership made 26 misleading statements on data privacy, hate speech, and other subjects. For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s 2010 statement that:
“We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want.”
That assurance appeared in a statement the jury found misleading. The judge found that choosing who could see a Facebook post did not necessarily control what outside app developers could access. That access was governed by separate settings that many users did not know existed.
New Mexico’s attorney general filed the lawsuit in 2021, following revelations that Cambridge Analytica obtained personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app.
But New Mexico’s case went beyond Cambridge Analytica.
The state challenged Facebook’s representations to consumers about its data practices and its efforts to address misinformation and hate speech. The case centered on misleading consumers under New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, the state’s consumer protection law.
The state argued that third parties had broad access to users’ information and that Facebook tolerated harmful content when doing so benefited its business. Meta disputed the allegations, denied selling users’ information, and said the state had taken statements out of context.
New Mexico’s Department of Justice says the jury found 43,899,725 violations of state law. That does not mean nearly 44 million individual New Mexicans had their data taken. The count reflected the estimated audience for each misleading statement, rather than the number of individual people affected.
State law allows penalties of up to $5,000 per violation. Judge Francis Mathew found that a penalty exceeding $219 billion was warranted under the law but reduced the amount to $25 billion.
The judge said earlier penalties had failed to stop Meta from misleading consumers, including a $5 billion FTC penalty in 2019.
The money is not earmarked for compensation payments to individual Facebook users. According to Attorney General Raúl Torrez, state law directs the penalties to New Mexico’s school system.
Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the company is confident it will prevail on appeal and characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to impose “a tax on speech.” Meta has also argued that a multibillion-dollar penalty risks violating constitutional protections concerning due process and excessive fines.
How to stay safe on social media
The case illustrates why privacy is not just a matter of choosing who can see a post. In a separate 2019 case, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged that Facebook had shared users’ information with third-party apps used by their friends, even when those users had chosen restrictive privacy settings.
A few precautions can help you limit what you share, although settings alone cannot guarantee privacy:
- Share selectively. Leave optional profile details blank, limit who can see your posts, and avoid publishing sensitive details such as your address or live location. Ask permission before posting information or photos involving other people.
- Check app permissions. Does a social media app really need your contacts, precise location, or entire photo library? Turn off unnecessary access in your device settings.
- Review tracking and advertising settings. Look for controls covering personalized ads, activity outside the platform, and data sharing. Restrict what you can, but don’t assume opting out of personalized ads stops all collection.
- Be selective about connected apps. Before connecting a quiz, game, or other service to your account, check what information it requests. Decline access that seems excessive for what the service does.
- Remember what “private” means. Restricting your audience helps control who sees your posts. It does not stop the platform itself from collecting or using information about your activity.
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