A New Mexico jury has delivered a striking win for state tech enforcement, finding that Meta willfully lied on 26 separate occasions in a case centered on data privacy, hate speech, misinformation, and the company’s post-Cambridge Analytica investigation of third-party app developers. The verdict stands out not just for its breadth, but for the jury’s apparent willingness to treat alleged misstatements across multiple content and privacy issues as part of a larger pattern of deceptive conduct.

For legal observers, the significance goes beyond the headlines.