New Mexico Jury Finds Meta Deceived 44 Million Users About Data‑Privacy Practices
What Happened — A New Mexico jury concluded that Meta’s Facebook platform violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act in roughly 44 million instances by falsely telling users they controlled their data and that the company did not sell or profit from that data. The verdict also held that Meta’s statements about hate‑speech moderation, misinformation, and third‑party app investigations were “willfully deceptive.”
Why It Matters for Trust & Control Assurance
- The case highlights the risk that inaccurate privacy notices create a gap between declared controls and actual practice, a gap continuous‑control‑assurance programs are built to detect and document.
- Demonstrable, up‑to‑date evidence of privacy‑policy compliance (e.g., consent logs, audit trails of data‑handling decisions) is essential to defend against regulatory and consumer‑protection actions.
- Verisq’s CookiePLUS Privacy capability helps organizations capture, version, and prove the truth of their consent and privacy‑notice processes, providing the defensible audit evidence needed in situations like this.
Who Is Affected
- Social‑media and other consumer‑facing tech platforms that rely on user‑generated data.
- Any organization that publicly markets privacy controls that differ from actual data‑handling practices.
Recommended Actions
- Conduct an immediate audit of all privacy notices, consent mechanisms, and data‑sharing disclosures against actual data‑processing activities.
- Capture versioned evidence of consent and policy statements in a tamper‑evident repository to support audit readiness.
- Align internal data‑handling procedures with disclosed policies; remediate any gaps and document the remediation steps.
Technical Notes – The verdict does not stem from a technical exploit but from repeated misrepresentations about data‑privacy practices, including false claims of not selling user data, not profiting from misinformation, and not investigating third‑party apps after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Source: The Record