A 2010 Pledge, A 2026 Bill
In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg used the opinion pages of the Washington Post to state that Facebook did not sell user data. In 2026, that sentence is less a corporate pledge than a piece of evidence. Lawyers for New Mexico cited the op-ed in arguing that the company’s public assurances about who could reach user data did not match what the platform actually permitted. The state’s suit was filed in 2021, after revelations that Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users.
The underlying facts have a shape that is easy to lose inside the numbers. Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. Cambridge Analytica harvested that data to generate targeted political advertisements during the 2016 election season, when it worked for Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. The legal question was narrower: what Meta had told its own users about who could reach their data.
New Mexico’s central allegation was specific. The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data and about its handling of hate speech and misinformation posted on the platform. State lawyers alleged further that the company knew third parties had broad access to users’ data and tolerated hate speech or other harmful content when it benefited the company’s bottom line.
The Judge’s Arithmetic
Judge Francis Mathew issued his order more than three weeks after the verdict had come in. The court found that Meta intentionally misled consumers about the privacy of their data. Mathew’s justification went to the architecture of the business rather than to a single incident: “Facebook’s wrongdoing – over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public – goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.” [1] The order treats the deception as a public, years-long practice rather than a single lapse.
Under state law, Mathew found that a penalty of more than $219bn was warranted. He then reduced the figure to $25bn. Raul Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general, described the outcome as one of the largest, if not the largest, single state verdict against a company in United States history, and said the judgment “should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley.” [1] Meta’s answer is already drafted. Its chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said the company was confident it would win on appeal. “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” he said. [1] He added: “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.” The two statements set out a defense with two legs: that the judgment is commercially unworkable and that it regulates expression. Whether either leg holds is now a question for an appellate court, which means the $25bn is, for the moment, a claim rather than a payment.
One Docket Among Many
New
Mexico is one docket among many. Meta faces thousands of lawsuits and pressure from lawmakers over the impact of Instagram and Facebook on teen mental health. In August, a trial brought by a coalition of state attorneys general began in a California federal court over claims that the company engineered Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children — a case that could expose it to huge damages and force sweeping changes to its platforms. It will also address claims by 29 states that the company illegally collected and used children’s data in violation of federal law.
Settlements already sketch the scale. Six other states settled their Cambridge Analytica-related lawsuits for $459m, as part of a $17bn multistate settlement Meta reached in August to resolve claims that its platforms had harmed teen mental health. Earlier this year, New Mexico won $942m in two trials against Meta over claims it facilitated sexual exploitation of young people on Instagram and Facebook and misled consumers about the platforms’ safety.
