Meta’s $25B fine left out accountability for harm from the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal

A political communication scholar and researcher argues that Meta's record-setting $25 billion penalty in New Mexico penalizes the company for misleading users and regulators about the Cambridge Analytica scandal rather than addressing the underlying harms of the data exploitation. The author contends that subsequent legal settlements have allowed Meta to escape scrutiny for political manipulation and psychographic profiling while leaving the full harms untested in court. Open article →