Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25B

A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook. Judge Francis Mathew handed down the amount, which state Attorney General Raúl Torrez described as "one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history," the AP reports. Torrez said the verdict should serve as a warning to tech companies and that New Mexico would continue to hold them accountable.

• "This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley," Torrez said at a news conference. The state had sought $35 billion to $40 billion.
• Mathew said that under state law, a penalty of more than $200 billion could have been warranted, reports Reuters. "Facebook's wrongdoing—over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public—goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," the judge wrote.

• Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election. Under state law, the company could have been fined up to $5,000 for each of the millions of violations.
• Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook for $18 billion in a nationwide case, but New Mexico chose to take the social media company to court on its own. Florida was the only other state that didn't sign the agreement.
• Attorneys for New Mexico argued the company would only change its ways with a sum that affected its stock price. Lawyers for Meta argued for paying no more than $3.4 billion. An award 10 times that or more would violate due process, was unconstitutional, and would not hold up under appeal, they said.

• Torrez told reporters following the verdict that all money awarded will go into a fund for the state's education system. The state is also seeking an injunction to stop similar practices.
• Meta plans to appeal the jury's verdict, potentially reducing the number of violations and therefore the total financial penalty. Lawyers for the company said it was unprecedented for the state to count the number of violations based on how many individuals may have heard or seen the misleading statements from the company, arguing there was no evidence these statements ever harmed anyone.