A New Mexico jury has found that Meta misled Facebook users about how it handled personal data, hate speech and misinformation, leaving a state judge to decide what may become an unusually large civil penalty.
The verdict followed a two-week trial in Santa Fe. Jurors concluded that 26 of 29 statements identified by the state were misleading and counted more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. Judge Francis Mathew has not yet fixed the penalty. State law permits up to $5,000 for each violation, and Attorney General Raúl Torrez has said his office will seek the maximum.
The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users was obtained through a third-party application and used for political profiling. New Mexico sued in 2021, arguing that Facebook gave users an inaccurate picture of their control over personal information and of the consistency with which the platform enforced its content policies.
Meta denied selling users’ information and argued that the state had removed selected statements from their wider context. The company said after the verdict that it disagreed and would continue defending its record.
The jury’s decision establishes liability, not the final amount owed. The court must now determine the civil penalty and consider the state’s requests for corrective statements and an audit of Meta’s data practices.
