News about consumer protection

A judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion to New Mexico after a jury found the company liable for misleading users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez called it “one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history,” while the state had originally sought $35 billion to $40 billion and Meta argued it should pay no more than $3.4 billion. Jurors had found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws, tied to Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of data from roughly 87 million profiles for targeted political ads. The money will go to a state education fund, and interest will accrue during an appeal, though the number of violations could be reduced. Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook for $18 billion, while New Mexico pursued its own case.