A New Mexico jury found Facebook violated the state's Unfair Practices Act almost 44 million times by misleading consumers about its data privacy practices. Each violation carries up to $5,000 in civil penalties, leaving the final figure to a judge in the coming weeks; New Mexico is also pressing for court-ordered changes to Facebook's data practices. Jurors found the company told users they controlled how their information was shared and that it did not buy or sell users' private data, particularly with advertisers. They also held that its statements about hate speech and misinformation were "willfully deceptive" — including claims that it did not profit from either, that it deleted harmful misinformation, that it did not tolerate hate speech, and that it applied no special protections for particular groups or exceptions for politicians or newsworthiness. Separately, the jury found Facebook did not honour promises, made after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to investigate apps that accessed significant amounts of user data, conduct forensic audits, stop working with developers who misused data and alert affected users. The verdict follows $942 million in New Mexico civil penalties in March and a $17 billion children's-online-safety settlement with California in August.

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