Earlier this week, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion fine for violating consumer protection laws dating back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. $25 billion is a massive fine, the largest Meta has ever faced, but it still had us folks at WIRED wondering: Would Meta even feel the pain?
\n\nA quick recap of the case: Filed in 2021, the suit alleged that the company violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act by lying to Meta users about the way it handled their data. (Later, New Mexico’s attorney general also made claims against Meta’s content moderation policies.) In September, a jury ruled in favor of the state. Then came the multibillion-dollar penalty.
\n\n“This ruling, and the Attorney General's approach to enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said in a statement. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online. We are confident we will prevail on appeal.”
\n\nMeta’s legal troubles have proliferated so much this year that it’s hard to keep track of them. Earlier this year in New…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/