• by Wendy Davis , 5 hours ago

A New Mexico judge on Wednesday Meta Platforms to pay $25 billion for violating the state's consumer protection law by misleading consumers about Facebook's privacy practices and content policies.

"Facebook's wrongdoing over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," Judge Francis Mathew in Santa Fe said in a written ruling. "It relates to the way in which Facebook induces people onto the platform and ultimately keeps them there. It also relates to the core asset that users bring to Facebook -- users' data -- which in tum is what has allowed Facebook to become as profitable as it is."

Mathew imposed the penalty around four weeks after a jury determined that Meta made numerous false or deceptive representations to users about their data, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2010 statement: "You have control over how your information is shared. We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want."

The jury verdict came at the conclusion of a trial that largely centered on the Cambridge Analytica debacle, in which the defunct political consultancy obtained data about tens of millions of Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica purchased personal information of millions Facebook users from Alexsandr Kogan, a professor who collected the data in 2014 via his personality quiz app "thisisyourdigitallife.

That app was downloaded by 270,000 Facebook users, but Kogan was able to gather information about at least 87 million of those users' friends.

In addition to statements about privacy, Meta also was found to have made false or deceptive representations about its content policies, including that it doesn't allow "hate speech" on the platform.

Jurors specifically determined that Meta committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection law. That statute provides for damages of up to $5,000 per violation.

Randi McGinn, an attorney representing the state Department of Justice, urged Mathew to fine Meta between $35 billion and $40 billion.

The platform countered that an amount in that range would be "grossly disproportional" to the findings, and would violate the federal and New Mexico constitutions, which prohibit excessive fines.

"Such a massive penalty would cause legitimate businesses to flee New Mexico in droves and would run roughshod over a host of constitutional protections," Meta argued in papers filed earlier this month with Mathew.

Instead, Meta sought a fine of somewhere between $154 million and $1.54 billion.

Mathew said in his written ruling that Facebook "was aware that its users did not understand its privacy settings and took advantage of that to a grossly unfair degree."

The judge cited an internal Meta email in which Zuckerberg said Facebook users "probably" don't understand their privacy settings or care who sees their updates.

"Rather than seek to educate Facebook's users about their privacy settings, Mr. Zuckerberg chose instead to capitalize on that lack of understanding in order to manipulate users into sharing more of their personal information publicly; all so that Facebook could better compete with one of its main rivals, Twitter," Mathew wrote.

He said the jury's findings support the highest penalty authorized by law -- which would come to around $219 billion -- but then reduced that amount 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 the New Mexico audience reached, and the clearly intentional and systematic nature of Facebook's repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty," he wrote.

Meta's chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney stated through a spokesperson that the company is "confident" it "will prevail on appeal."

"This ruling, and the Attorney General's approach to enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico," Mahoney stated. "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online."

The company previously paid $5 billion to settle FTC charges stemming from Cambridge Analytica, and resolved a class-action suit by users for $725 million. Meta also recently agreed to pay $500 million to resolve other states' claims relating to Cambridge Analytica; that settlement was part of a larger $18 billion deal focused primarily on charges regarding teen safety.