By MARTY LEVINE

Two Pitt professors’ testimony was crucial to winning a $25 billion fine last month against Facebook, which, they believe, will prompt the social media giant and other such companies to better protect user data on their sites.

“I think this is going to be a landmark case, not just because of the cost of the judgment, but because it opens the door for other states to sue,” says one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses, Samuel Woolley, William S. Dietrich II Chair in Disinformation Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Communication.

“It's a monumental judgment in some ways and it could have the effect of encouraging other social media companies … to be held accountable through the justice system,” said Calum Matheson, associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication and another expert witness for the plaintiff, New Mexico’s Department of Justice.

A civil jury found that “Facebook committed 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico law,” the state’s DOJ said after the verdict. 

In the judge’s ruling, he noted that “Facebook's core business and primary source of revenue is generated from the sale of advertising to third parties that is targeted at Facebook's users based on their personal information. Facebook's privacy settings do not provide users with meaningful control over their data in many ways. … Facebook's misrepresentations about users' control of their data were not isolated incidents, but rather a systematic pattern of deception at the core of Facebook's business model.”

The judge found that, from the top down, the company had “a coherent strategy designed to mislead the public … concerning users' control of data, third-party data misuse, misinformation, hate speech, and equal enforcement” of Facebook’s own rules for control of the last two categories. Such violations “constituted unfair or deceptive trade practices.”

Given access to Facebook’s internal documents and correspondence among executives – unearthed as part of the legal proceedings – Woolley was able to show the difference between “what Facebook said they were doing about hateful content and misinformation on their platform versus what they were doing behind closed doors.” Facebook had promoted the creation of an internal system that was supposed to catch, examine and potentially prohibit hateful posts and misinformation among all users. The Facebook executive in charge of this effort had announced “a zero-tolerance approach to hate speech,” Woolley said.

But in the U.S. only 2 percent of hate speech was ever found and deleted, according to internal documents, Woolley told the court. “Evidence demonstrated that Facebook seemed to be making a choice to deceive users and the general public about the systems … not only to appease powerful figures” but to increase public engagement, lest users flee the platform. Angry and hateful content also increased users’ time on Facebook, the company knew. “The evidence demonstrated that Facebook had systems in place for years” that favored certain users – from the politically powerful to advertisers – that effectively allowed Facebook to delay action on such material, while they supposedly made a decision about whether to remove it.

“Facebook during my cross examination and in their public statements about the verdict have tried to make this about free speech,” Woolley also said – claiming that their internal system protected journalists and democracy advocates who might be falsely accused of hate speech. But free-speech concerns are a smoke screen, Woolley said.

Matheson also testified to Facebook’s misleading statements. “They can say they don't sell your data,” but they did sell access to users’ data so that companies can target their ads, he pointed out. This first came to light when Facebook allowed a now-defunct company called Cambridge Analytica to mine user data so that politicians could target them. The company denied the practice but Meta, Facebook’s parent, settled a suit over these actions in 2022 for $725 million.

Matheson testified that, following the Cambridge Analytica case, Facebook had promised to police itself, but had done so only minimally. The company made many statements “to make it appear like they were effectively detecting hate speech and removing it.” He compares the actions of Facebook and other such companies to the strategies Big Tobacco used to keep people smoking despite clear health risks.

“Social media companies need to convince everyone that everything is safe... because people already want to use the product. So what they do is they remove enough doubt – and people want to use the product anyway.

“The one big advantage social media have over those other industries... is they own the channels that those messages go out through – as if Philip Morris also owned the New York Times.”

Matheson and Woolley both caution that they do not speak for New Mexico but believe the state’s DOJ will continue to pursue the case while Facebook appeals. 

Still, can any monetary judgment be effective against a company that makes 10 times that amount per year and is said to be worth much more than that? Matheson believes such judgments can affect everything from a company’s stock prices to its public reputation. 

Despite the fact that the earlier Cambridge Analytica settlement precludes most states from suing Facebook over the data privacy issue, Woolley says that New Mexico’s tack – hinging on consumer protection laws – may prove fruitful for further lawsuits. 

“This is a big deal for researchers” as well, he said, given the large amount of internal Facebook data that has now been revealed. “This case blows the doors wide open” concerning Facebook's public promises versus its private actions, he said. “A lot of these documents have never been seen before.” 

Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.

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