Meta ordered to pay $25 billion!
Austin/New York, US, Oct 21 (EFE).-
A United States court on Wednesday ordered Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to pay 25 billion dollars for misleading the public about the protection of their personal data.
The case is linked to Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that worked for US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and obtained data from millions of Facebook users without consent to promote political advertising, according to the state Department of Justice statement.
Judge Francis Mathew of a New Mexico state court set the penalty after a jury determined that Facebook made misleading promises regarding who could access its users’ data and how it protected that information.
The revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica, which came to light in 2018, affected up to 87 million profiles and sparked an international scandal over social media networks’ handling of personal information and their role in election campaigns.
However, the trial also scrutinized Facebook’s public statements regarding its efforts to combat misinformation and hate speech.
The jury found 26 statements issued by Meta between 2010 and 2021 to be misleading, including several made by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer at the time.
“Facebook’s wrongdoing, over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public, goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Mathew wrote in the ruling.
According to the decision, the company maintained these promises despite internal warnings that it could not fulfill them. It also allowed certain commercial partners to retain access to data it had publicly claimed it would stop sharing, in order to avoid revenue losses.
The judge concluded that these messages were intended to build trust and attract users, whose data is essential to the company’s personalized advertising model.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez highlighted the ruling as one of the largest financial penalties imposed on a corporation in US history.
Mathew initially calculated a fine exceeding 219 billion dollars, but reduced the final amount to 25 billion dollars. The penalty will accrue an annual interest rate of 15% until paid in full.
The funds will go toward New Mexico’s education system, Torrez stated during a press conference reported by local media. The Attorney General noted, however, that an appeal by Meta could delay the disbursement of the funds.
Meta, which had already announced its intention to appeal the jury’s verdict, previously paid 5 billion dollars in 2019 to settle a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation into its privacy practices, and agreed to pay another 725 million dollars in 2022 to resolve a class-action lawsuit tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as reported by Bloomberg. EFE aaca/dmv/dgp
