Mark Zuckerberg was put on the spot over a promise he made about Facebook users’ personal data over a decade ago as a New Mexico jury heard his virtual testimony Thursday.
The Meta founder was questioned about a 2010 Washington Post op-ed in which he assured Facebook users that the social media giant “never shares your personal information with people or services.”
More than a decade later, prosecutors are challenging that claim in New Mexico’s second trial against Meta.
The Cambridge Analytica controversy began with an apparently harmless personality quiz, in which people who took it provided information that could then expose data linked to their Facebook accounts and, under the platform’s rules at the time, information associated with some of their friends.
That information was ultimately obtained by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked on campaigns and became closely associated with data-driven political targeting during the 2016 election.
The controversy exploded after reports revealed that Facebook data had been harvested and used to target political advertising.
Zuckerberg testified virtually as prosecutors pressed him on what Facebook told users about how it handles their personal information.
Their questioning came after jurors saw an email from a Facebook executive acknowledging that the company did share personal data.
Asked about the apparent contradiction between his public statement and Facebook’s internal discussions, Zuckerberg described the issue as a matter of nuance.
“These are very nuanced points,” he said in a deposition played for jurors, adding that Facebook had debated how to communicate its “basic beliefs” about data sharing.
New Mexico is seeking civil penalties and changes to Meta’s policies governing users’ personal information.
