New Mexico jury overwhelmingly sides with state, says Facebook violated consumer protection law

A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook willfully violated state law and engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices regarding collection of user data, misinformation and hate speech on the platform and preferential treatment for government figures.

In total, the First Judicial District jury in Santa Fe found that Facebook committed close to 44 million violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. First Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew will now decide how much the company will pay. Attorneys representing the state are asking for the maximum $5,000 penalty per violation — which could be upwards of a $219 billion civil penalty, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said at a news conference in Albuquerque following the verdict. 

Torrez added that the funds from Meta’s civil penalty automatically benefit a special fund support educational needs of New Mexico schools and students.

In five separate categories, the jury found that Facebook misrepresented or made false statements regarding users’ ability to control their data; the company’s own efforts to combat hate speech and misinformation; its application of community standards uniformly; and its commitment to conduct a thorough investigation after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. In total, the jury sided with the state on 31 out of 34 counts, according to the jury verdict form. 

However, Randi McGinn, attorney representing the state, told reporters following the announcement of the jury’s decision that some counts were combined, so the jury sided with the state on 26 of the 29 statements.

“I hope that the message is unmistakable for Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta and well beyond that: Anyone in big tech who thinks that they can mislead and misrepresent the way in which they do business in the State of New Mexico will not be tolerated,” Torrez said. “And without exception, we will hold these executives and companies to account.”

The jury ruled that the state failed to prove that Facebook engaged in unfair or deceptive trade practices regarding statements the company made about removing graphic violence or fake COVID cures; fact-checking to address misinformation; and removing posts that promote hate crimes or acts of terrorism in wake of the 2017 white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville.

Jurors began hearing arguments earlier this month in the lawsuit filed by former Attorney General Hector Balderas in 2021. Attorneys general across the nation joined multi-state lawsuits against the social media company, amid news reports in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica was harvesting Facebook users’ data to use in political campaigns, but Balderas decided to forgo a multi-state coalition and sue Facebook individually over its alleged role in exposing users’ data.

New Mexico Department of Justice attorneys’ case included video depositions of founder Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg.

The trial marked the third time Torrez and his attorneys faced off against the tech company’s lawyers in a Santa Fe courtroom in recent months.

In March, a Santa Fe jury ordered Meta — Facebook’s parent company — to pay $375 million in damages to the state after it found the company misrepresented the risks to teen users’ mental health. And in August, First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered the company to pay $567 million for an abatement fund aimed at ameliorating harms done to the state’s youth. Meta has sought to have Biedscheid amend his orders.

“What this jury has said is that after 16 years of Facebook lying to New Mexicans and telling them their data was safe when they were taking all of their private thoughts and selling it to other people. Somebody finally stood up to them and said ‘we are not going to put up with that,’” McGinn told reporters.

In a statement provided to Source NM, a Meta spokesperson said, “We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record. Meta’s platforms are forums for free expression. We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community. This means prioritizing free speech, protecting our users’ information and giving them control over their data.”