Jury catches Facebook liable for deceiving users in Cambridge Analytica case
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A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy protections on the social media platform.
Key facts
- Also this year, New Mexico won judgments totaling $942 million from Meta in a two-phase trial about the company's safety protections for minors
- Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to settle the multistate lawsuit surrounding child safety issues
- The two-week trial in Santa Fe centered on accusations that Facebook deceived users about a data breach stemming from a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million
- Jurors sided with prosecutors, finding Facebook's failure to protect users' data impacted New Mexico's entire population of more than 2 million people
Summary
It is now up to the judge to determine how much the company would pay, with attorneys representing the state asking for the maximum $5,000 penalty per violation. The two-week trial in Santa Fe centered on accusations that Facebook deceived users about a data breach stemming from a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles and sold it to a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to generate targeted ads. Jurors sided with prosecutors, finding Facebook's failure to protect users' data impacted New Mexico's entire population of more than 2 million people. "For years, Facebook operated as if the rules that apply to everyone else didn't apply to them.