New Mexico jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving over two million users in Cambridge Analytica scandal

From the Newshound archive · first published 26 September 2026.

A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook liable for misleading its entire state population of more than two million residents over privacy protections, with a judge now set to decide the financial penalty. State prosecutors are seeking the $5,000-per-violation maximum fine, and the jury held Facebook accountable for more than two million individual breaches. The case centred on a personality quiz app that harvested data from around 87 million profiles and sold it to Cambridge Analytica, which used it for targeted political advertising including during the 2016 Trump campaign.

The jury also found Facebook deceived the public about its own investigation into data brokers following the original Cambridge Analytica fallout.

Meta's defence argued that the evidence underpinning New Mexico's case was outdated, pointing to a five-year investigation that uncovered only one additional data breach.

Meta separately agreed an $18 billion settlement in August over a multistate lawsuit targeting youth safety on its platforms.