Meta ordered to pay $25B penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case (cnbc.com)
242 pointsby cbg05 hours ago146 comments
j_horvat an hour ago
Sure, but where's the jail time for executives. This may be a bit more than the usual slap on the wrist, but its hardly consequence that actually matters to the likes of Meta. This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible for the crimes they sign off on.
lrvick an hour ago
No one will bother making a move on the execs until the get-out-of-jail-free cards they bought from the current president are no longer valid.
cush an hour ago
If only software engineers were liable like real engineers are
lrvick 40 minutes ago
"But my boss told me to increase engagement at all costs, including substantially increased rates of teen suicides, so shrug guess I have to since my visa will be revoked otherwise and I need this cash to send home to my family."
Even when you cannot get highly employable US engineers to agree to do unethical work, you can always import some indentured servants who are too vulnerable to feel like they can say no.
I know someone that took a job at meta short term to get cash for a family member with cancer.
Go after the people giving the orders, not the workers trying to survive a deeply fucked up system.
barbazoo 37 minutes ago
Why would you personally punish the chumps that execute the orders instead of leadership that gave the orders?
gosub100 34 minutes ago
Why punish the leadership? they were just following their "fiduciary duty to shareholders" to maximize value.
wavefunction 23 minutes ago
Punish everyone, you may be unjust but at least you'll be thorough.
vjvjvjvjghv 18 minutes ago
"Real" engineers aren't responsible for their product being used in nefarious ways as long as the product was built according to the rules.
JumpCrisscross 40 minutes ago
> where's the jail time for executives
Our American obsession with jail is nuts. The violation at hand was “misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data.”
Lots of folks at Meta should be criminally investigated. But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie.
> This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
layer8 14 minutes ago
> But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie.
From the judgement: “The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act […].”
Emphasis mine.
It isn’t criminal law, but maybe at that level it should be.
mxkopy 5 minutes ago
Honestly it doesn’t matter what they get them on, half of the PMC in America needs to be indicted on RICO charges for white collar crimes against humanity
MiroslavPokorny 29 minutes ago
Executives cant goto jail, they are already taking responsibilty.
NuclearPM 24 minutes ago
I don’t understand your comment.
vjvjvjvjghv 20 minutes ago
I assume it's the typical "accepting responsibility" of execs and politicians where nothing happens. Best case they throw some underling under the bus or have their institution pay a fine. But they themselves have no consequences
seizethecheese 19 minutes ago
The judgement here was for violation of civil law, not criminal law. If New Mexico would have gone after the executives, the result would have been a much smaller fine, not jail. Or are you suggesting the executives should have been prosecuted for some criminal law violation? If so, what?
derekdahmer 13 minutes ago
> This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible for the crimes they sign off on.
Cambridge Analytica was a decade ago and there hasn’t been a similar Meta scandal since, so it seems like the deterrent has worked.
stillpointlab an hour ago
For those who haven't seen, the New Mexico Attorney General released tapes of the depositions for Zuckerberg [1] and Sandberg [2].
bananamogul 4 hours ago
All the states that participated in the class action settlement got $725 million combined.
New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion.
Great timing for the AG who’s up for reelection on November 3 (even though it was the previous AG who made the call).
gruez 4 hours ago
>New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion.
No because that's still subject to appeal, unlike the settlement. "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush", etc.
whycome 3 hours ago
That’s all framing. If they use the win for their reelection campaign…they just won’t mention the appeals process.
freejazz 3 hours ago
What are the grounds for the appeal? How does NM law look on that issue? It's a significantly reduced judgment too.
Like, yeah, you have a point in the abstract, but barring any actual supportive facts, it doesn't seem like a good point.
gruez 2 hours ago
IANAL, but it's not hard to find answers with a trivial search, eg.
https://kieferandkiefer.com/understanding-how-jury-verdicts-...
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R331...
freejazz an hour ago
It's not a jury verdict, and I am a lawyer...
Also, a paper from RAND from 1987? Are you for real?
aprilthird2021 2 hours ago
It's a very good point. The further upon appeal Meta goes, the more removed they get from a jury and they'll be more likely to get a favorable ruling due to the company's negative approval rating amongst the public
throwaway894345 2 hours ago
Presumably it’s also easier to influence judges than random jurors.
freejazz an hour ago
It's not a jury verdict. Crazy how much that needs to be repeated in this thread.
cwnyth an hour ago
No one reads the article anymore. They're just vibe commenting.
loeg 28 minutes ago
A jury is involved in the process. If the jury doesn't find violations, the judge can't assign penalties for those violations.
> The jury concluded that Meta had more than 43 million violations of the state’s unfair practices act, with each transgression carrying a civil penalty as high as $5,000.
Note that this is like, 20 violations per resident of New Mexico. And also ~50% of Facebook's total revenue (more than 100% of income) at the time of the CA scandal.
loeg 31 minutes ago
They got an outlandish $25B in their local kangaroo court. It'll be appealed and hopefully reduced.
vjvjvjvjghv 17 minutes ago
"New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion."
I highly doubt that New Mexico will get 25. Although it would be nice since I live in New Mexico.
notfried an hour ago
Meta will surely appeal, and will likely get the fine reduced to like 10% of that. But for comparison, in the recent multistate settlement over social media addiction by 47 states for $17 billion, there was a provision in that settlement to get $459 million [1] in exchange for releasing Meta from any state claims related to Cambridge Analytica. So those 47 states got $459 million for what New Mexico will likely get a few billion for.
[1] https://www.techpolicy.press/the-459-million-cambridge-analy...
giancarlostoro an hour ago
I remember long ago, you could fully hide your profile from ANY type of search. Now you cannot. I also remember long before they started scanning your face, they added an opt-out checkbox, I'm pretty sure this disappeared for a long time. You know that feature where they'd auto-suggest who to tag? Yea, you could bar them from using your face for that, now Facebook has taken a steaming pile of... on your privacy at levels I've never seen them pull before.
alex1138 an hour ago
Yes, I remember an article in the Guardian about this, around 2015-6
Facebook does this. People think 'privacy' as a complaint and perhaps think about advertising on FB but straight up, settings get reset (including posts suddenly becoming Public. or graph search.)
Why? Because Mark Zuckerberg does not believe in it. In 2010 he said privacy was no longer a social norm. Not only does he himself not believe in it, but he can't keep it to himself. He knows 'better than you'. So, he outright changes it himself or instructs his engineers to do it
It's like with Free Basics in India. You could, theoretically, support it. Many didn't, it was a form of digital colonialism. But let's say you happened to think it was a good idea. It didn't matter either way: Facebook sent emails on users' behalf to TRAI
That's who Zuckerberg is. A sociopath, a criminal, someone who knows nothing but how to steal
10111001 41 minutes ago
> I remember long ago, you could fully hide your profile from ANY type of search. Now you cannot.
Do you have any more details on that? Are you talking about searches within Facebook or outside of it?
I also remember long before they started scanning your face, they added an opt-out checkbox, I'm pretty sure this disappeared for a long time. You know that feature where they'd auto-suggest who to tag? Yea, you could bar them from using your face for that, now Facebook has taken a steaming pile of... on your privacy at levels I've never seen them pull before.
Do you have any more details on that?
paxy an hour ago
It’s hilarious that one of the outcomes of Meta cozying up with the current administration to escape scrutiny at the Federal level has been 50+ state attorneys general prosecuting them instead.
jeanloolz an hour ago
25B is not a small fine. Finally an amount that should make them think twice their harming decisions
rvz an hour ago
They don't care.
Meta can take the hit by either selling stock, laying of more employees or both to cover that cost.
idlewords an hour ago
Or they can put thick mitts on Zuckerberg's hands for a couple of years so he can't sign any checks.
barbazoo 35 minutes ago
You're being sarcastic, right? Right? It's a 1.5 trillion dollar company [1], how would this amount even be relevant compared to the profits they made from their behavior.
dgunay 14 minutes ago
Maybe the $25B isn't guaranteed and doesn't seriously harm them on its own, but if the legal landscape shifts enough to make fines of this scale more common than the usual dozens-to-hundreds of millions, then it starts to impact their bottom line.
binarymax an hour ago
12% of annual revenue (~200B for 2025). Not a small amount.
afdbcreid an hour ago
You mean 200B?
rajman187 an hour ago
meta makes $1.4B/week in net profit, so that's about 4 months of net profits
MiroslavPokorny 42 minutes ago
And kids got fined 1/2M for downloading a few mp3s...
f33d5173 20 minutes ago
This is just for new mexico, a relatively small state in a single country facebook operates in. It's probably a solid decade worth of profit in that state. Because their privacy policy that no one reads wasn't clear enough.
binarymax 41 minutes ago
lol that was a fun typo. Fixed :)
loeg 23 minutes ago
~50% of 2018 revenue, which is when the CA scandal was happening.
bilekas an hour ago
Holy! This might be the first time I've seen a meta fine that actually feels substantial enough for them to change behaviours. That's impressive.
yodsanklai 41 minutes ago
Any reason why META surged after hours? is that related to this news?
loeg 25 minutes ago
Q3 earnings. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187025
hawk_ 2 hours ago
Stock seems to have shot up ~7% aftermarket so just cost of business.
minraws an hour ago
They beat revenue expectations, and earnings per share was ok, and they guided for even higher revenue next quarter above estimates ofc.
Somehow Meta is making money despite starting to loose DAUs now. So honestly I don't quite understand what's what, also most of the big income is from Ads and biggest Ads spenders are startups and companies heavily dependent on VCs and AI... So it's definitely somewhat circular, and Ads is the most recession affected business so a down turn in markets will cycle through it.
But ngl if all the earnings are this ok then hyperscalers stock might not crash this quarter, well then again I didn't think they would but a person could dream.
I am quite bullish on AI, but would prefer the fluff to get out of the way asap, otherwise don't want it to happen at a bad time, and too many people get caught pants down.
Forgeties79 an hour ago
Hell didn’t they stop even reporting DAU’s?
minraws 44 minutes ago
they now do something called, Meta Family daily active people, similar thing but aggregate of all Meta stuff. very sus imho.
cush an hour ago
Their users are ad execs and data brokers
paxy an hour ago
Escaping litigation with a fine is always a good outcome, no matter how large the penalty. Stock price will drop the day governments start regulating these companies or breaking them up.
techjamie 39 minutes ago
I've always been fond of the idea of putting a corporation in "jail" where any presence they have is shuttered for the duration, bank accounts are frozen, and locations are to be uninhabited except by third party security.
They can hire lawyers to argue it out while they sit in limbo like the rest of us.
Imagine if Amazon ran afoul of the law and AWS was offline in corporate jail for a day? It'd be motication to never, ever risk that happening.
reasonableklout 27 minutes ago
Other countries also have a concept of the corporate death penalty. But it has not happened in the US for something like a century.
lrvick an hour ago
Well Meta is reacting to all the costs by just starting to charge for things previously free, like sharing links.
I suspect they are now entering the Earthlink/AOL phase where they squeeze every last dime out of the confused and abandoned senior citizens left on the platform until they die off.
kube-system an hour ago
Meta also owns the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 14th largest social media platforms behind facebook.
3.6 billion people use a Meta app every day - 43% of the world's population.
lrvick an hour ago
True. But seeing them lose an arm would be proof the monster can be killed.
kube-system an hour ago
I'm saying I don't think we'll see that. Yes, many people I know have left facebook but I think that's an artifact of me being in a bubble rather than it being a global trend.
lrvick 31 minutes ago
I am more optimistic. People are addicted to targeted content, but local LLMs are already great at this. I have an agent that manages my local playlists and operates my own local spotify from a consumer GPU.
And youtube, same thing. I have not actually used youtube in years. Local software downloads video files from their servers, strips all the ads and sponsored content, and shows me the ones most interesting to me.
Once that is easy for everyone to do with software and weights-on-silicon embedded in next gen phones, the entire value prop of these networks starts to fall apart.
Between that and endless fines and negative movies coming out, I think they can be killed, or at least not a thing kids are allowed near anymore.
vvpan an hour ago
I rarely cry but my eyes just got wet. It feels so good.
nidnogg an hour ago
People are not notifying this nearly enough, but Meta is still going up and at it in Brazil [1] during one of the most polarized elections I've ever seen during my time.
Things got so ridiculous that Meta's AI WhatsApp companion would let you generate one candidate's posters, but flat-out deny you the same prompt for the opposition. Of course the bias skewed heavily towards benefiting the alt-right, pro-MAGA party.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...
culi an hour ago
Thanks for continuing to talk about this. It's ridiculous how much the US meddles in the elections of others and acts all :surprised-pikachu: when Russia sorta kinda meddles a bit in ONE election of their own.
The Bolsanaro family is ofc a close ally of Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/21/battle-meta-al...
We even have Meta employees calling the meddling out: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/16/meta-employees-...
akulbe an hour ago
That's just New Mexico. I wonder when will the other states step up, and hit them with more fines?
MiroslavPokorny 31 minutes ago
Just waiting for the orange one to say New Mexico is socialist and change the name because we cant have a state named after illegals.
lenerdenator 8 minutes ago
They were originally sued for, what, half a trillion?
Pennies on the dollar.
mike_bob 3 hours ago
Not enough.
ArcHound 3 hours ago
This seems to be a consequence of the Cambridge Analytica. Could it be that we'll see some consequences?
idlewords an hour ago
That penalty is almost 1/3 of a Metaverse. That's got to sting!
ThouYS 2 hours ago
finally some proper penalty OOMs
usefulcat an hour ago
Can they appeal it?
loeg 21 minutes ago
> Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney criticized the penalty, saying in a statement that the company is “confident” that it will “prevail on appeal.”
MASNeo an hour ago
Will Meta be able to apeal?
MiroslavPokorny 29 minutes ago
Another example why Third party Advertising needs to be banned and also put on the list of human rights by the UN.
The inbalance between good and bad consequences from third party advertising is just completely broken.
Devasta an hour ago
Anything less than a jail cell is less than the top brass of Meta deserve.
devsda 3 hours ago
> While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.
umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen.
They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment .
Otherwise it's just cost of business.
aprilthird2021 2 hours ago
They will likely not even have to pay $25B bc they will continue to appeal till they get a more favorable ruling
xyzzy123 an hour ago
Are you proposing that as part of this settlement, Meta should have to delete the posts and likes and facebook accounts of users in New Mexico?
warkdarrior 21 minutes ago
> umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen.
>
> They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment .
How was the data stolen from users? Do the users no longer have access to their own data? Was it deleted from their devices?
ChrisArchitect an hour ago
New Mexico DOJ release: https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/the-new-mexico-department-of...