Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew, File, via The Olympian.
WA state files motion for maximum $24.6 million penalty against Facebook parent company Meta
From The Olympian:
Facebook parent company Meta may face a $24.6 million penalty in Washington state for intentionally violating the state’s campaign finance transparency laws 822 times.
The motion for the maximum penalty was filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson according to a Friday morning news release.
“Facebook is a repeat, intentional violator of the law,” Ferguson said in the release. “It’s a sophisticated company. Instead of accepting responsibility and apologizing for its conduct, Facebook went to court to gut our campaign finance law in order to avoid accountability. If this case doesn’t warrant a maximum penalty, what does?”
Meta repeatedly violated the campaign finance law since December 2018, the state claimed. Companies such as Meta, which host political ads, and other advertisers are required by state law to provide public records about the ads they host in a “timely manner.”
King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North agreed with the state’s claims in October and ruled that all 822 violations were intentional. Courts can triple penalties for intentional violations, the release noted
Post a comment
No comments yet. You should be kind and add one!
By submitting a comment you grant Yelm Community Blog a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate and irrelevant comments will be removed at an admin’s discretion. Your email is used for verification purposes only, it will never be shared.