New Mexico Jury Weighs Privacy Claims Against Facebook in Landmark Trial

Attorneys representing New Mexico wrapped up their case against Facebook by accusing the platform of misleading users about data privacy and asking jurors to find the company liable for thousands of state law violations. Jurors reviewed two weeks of evidence to decide if Facebook broke the state's Unfair Practices Act and how many times violations occurred, which will help the judge set financial penalties. New Mexico is the only state to take these data breach claims to trial after 48 other states reached a settlement with parent company Meta earlier this year.

The Core Dispute

The lawsuit focuses on a third-party personality quiz that harvested data from roughly 87 million profiles and sold it to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to create targeted ads for clients including the 2016 campaign for Donald Trump. State attorney Randi McGinn argued that Facebook turned user dreams into data to sell to advertisers and failed to properly check third-party apps. Facebook attorney Dane Butswinkas disputed these claims, stating that the platform does not sell user information, investigated suspicious apps, and has greatly improved its privacy safeguards over the last five years.

Testimony and Penalties

The trial included a video deposition from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who defended company policies regarding content moderation and a special list of accounts that required extra checks before removal. Prosecutors argued this list caused backlogs that let viral content spread widely, while Zuckerberg noted that monitoring content and avoiding the censorship of political speech is a difficult task. New Mexico estimates that about 350,000 residents faced exposure to the Cambridge Analytica breach out of more than 1.3 million state users at the time. The state seeks the maximum civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation and a court order to stop future data breaches, which could potentially cost the company billions of dollars.