Judge orders Meta to pay $25bn in fines for Facebook privacy violations

A jury found Meta guilty of lying to Facebook users in ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠New Mexico about access to their data.

Meta has been ordered to pay New Mexico $25bn in one of the largest judgments secured by a single US state against a company [Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

A United States judge has ordered Meta to pay $25bn after a jury found the company misled Facebook users about privacy violations, marking the biggest fine ever against the tech giant.

New Mexico state District Judge Francis Mathew issued the ruling on Wednesday.

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“Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data. This was false,” he said.

Last month, a jury found Meta responsible for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez highlighted that the decision was one of the largest state verdicts against a company in US history.

“This judgement should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley,” Torrez said at a news conference.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez discusses a judgement in the state’s Facebook case during a news conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Wednesday [Susan Montoya Bryan/AP]

Meta lawyer Matt Nicholson argued in court that a sum as high as $40bn would be “shocking to the conscience”, while a lawyer for New Mexico, Randi McGinn, urged standing up to “tech titans who think they are bulletproof and can do whatever they want”.

“The jury didn’t make findings that any New Mexican heard or saw these statements, or was harmed by them,” Nicholson argued during a hearing held early this month.

Torrez told reporters following the verdict that all the money awarded would go into a fund for the state’s education system.

The amount awarded in the case far exceeds the $5bn fine that the Federal Trade Commission levied against Facebook in 2019.

New Mexico accused Meta of misleading users about who could access their personal information and how harmful content was handled on its platforms. Jurors found that 26 of 29 statements made by Meta and its leadership on privacy and content moderation were misleading.

Meta plans to appeal the verdict, potentially reducing the final payment amount.

In a statement, CJ Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the company is confident it will win on appeal.

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

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, stemmed partly from revelations that Cambridge Analytica , a British political consulting firm that is now defunct, had obtained personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent and used it to develop targeted political advertisements. Its clients included President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The case, a major setback for the tech giant, marks the second legal defeat for Meta in New Mexico in six months. In March, a jury found the company misled users about the safety of young people on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, ordering it to pay $375m in civil penalties . Meta was later ordered to make an additional $567m payment into a state fund for teen mental health and was required to implement measures to protect young users.

陪审团裁定 Meta 向新墨西哥州的 Facebook 用户谎称可以访问他们的数据，罪名成立。

Meta公司被勒令向新墨西哥州支付250亿美元，这是美国单个州对一家公司获得的最大判决之一。[Dado Ruvic/路透社]

美国一名法官下令 Meta 公司支付 250 亿美元罚款，此前陪审团认定该公司在隐私侵犯问题上误导了 Facebook 用户，这是这家科技巨头有史以来面临的最大罚款。

新墨西哥州地方法官弗朗西斯·马修于周三作出裁决。

墨西哥将强制Meta、TikTok和X更好地保护平台上的未成年人（列表1/3）

据报道，Meta 员工称，在巴西大选中，卢拉的账户受到限制：名单 2/3。

列表 3（共 3 条）：为什么社交媒体已成为巴西总统竞选中的一个选举议题

他说：“Facebook曾向用户承诺，用户可以控制自己的数据。这是谎言。”

上个月，陪审团裁定Meta公司违反新墨西哥州消费者保护法超过4300万次。新墨西哥州总检察长劳尔·托雷斯强调，这是美国历史上针对企业作出的最大规模的州级判决之一。

托雷斯在新闻发布会上说：“这一判决应该向硅谷发出一个信号，一个明确的信息。”

新墨西哥州总检察长劳尔·托雷斯周三在新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基举行的新闻发布会上讨论了该州 Facebook 案件的判决。[苏珊·蒙托亚·布莱恩/美联社]

Meta公司的律师马特·尼科尔森在法庭上辩称，高达400亿美元的赔偿金额“令人震惊”，而新墨西哥州的律师兰迪·麦金则敦促人们站出来对抗“那些认为自己刀枪不入、可以为所欲为的科技巨头”。

尼科尔森在本月初举行的一次听证会上辩称：“陪审团没有认定任何新墨西哥州居民听到或看到这些言论，也没有认定任何新墨西哥州居民因此受到伤害。”

托雷斯在判决后告诉记者，所有判给的钱都将用于该州的教育系统基金。

该案判决的赔偿金额远远超过联邦贸易委员会在 2019 年对 Facebook 处以的 50 亿美元罚款。

新墨西哥州指控Meta公司误导用户，隐瞒了谁可以访问用户的个人信息以及其平台上有害内容的处理方式。陪审团认定，Meta公司及其管理层就隐私和内容审核所作的29项声明中有26项具有误导性。

Meta计划对判决提出上诉，这可能会导致最终赔偿金额减少。

Meta公司首席法律官CJ Mahoney在一份声明中表示，该公司有信心在上诉中胜诉。

“这项裁决以及总检察长采取的执法方式，几乎让在新墨西哥州开展业务变得不可能，”马奥尼说。“从本质上讲，这起诉讼试图对言论征税，以强制执行关于人们在网络上可以说什么的新规定。”

这起诉讼于2021年提起，部分原因是此前披露，英国政治咨询公司剑桥分析（Cambridge Analytica，现已倒闭）未经用户同意，获取了多达8700万Facebook用户的个人数据，并利用这些数据制作定向政治广告。该公司的客户包括唐纳德·特朗普总统2016年的竞选团队。

这起案件对这家科技巨头来说是一次重大挫败，也是Meta在六个月内于新墨西哥州遭遇的第二次法律败诉。今年3月，陪审团裁定该公司在Facebook、Instagram和WhatsApp上误导用户，隐瞒了青少年用户的安全问题，并判令其支付3.75亿美元的民事罚款。之后，Meta还被责令向州政府设立的青少年心理健康基金额外支付5.67亿美元，并被要求采取措施保护年轻用户。