In brief
A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) after a two-week trial found the company lied about how it handled Facebook user data for more than a decade. The penalty is the largest ever imposed on Meta for data‑privacy violations and represents a rare legal check on the tech giant. Meta plans to appeal, arguing the fine is unconstitutional and disproportionate. The ruling underscores that even huge tech firms can face record fines when they violate state law.
Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, faces the largest penalty ever imposed on it for its data‑privacy practices.
A New Mexico judge ordered the firm to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) with a two‑week trial revealing that Meta spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data between 2010 and 2021.
The court found that senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, sent communications designed to mislead the public and that the violations spanned more than 11 years. Judge Francis Mathew described the misrepresentations as “willful” and calculated the penalty roughly against the company’s quarterly profits.
Meta’s chief counsel CJ Mahoney said the fine made it all but impossible to do business in New Mexico and that the company would succeed in an appeal.
The fine is the largest ever against Meta. Earlier this year the company reached an $18bn settlement with California over child‑safety issues and New Mexico also slapped Meta with a near $1bn penalty for misleading the public about child harms on its platforms.
The lawsuit stemmed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from millions of Facebook users was used to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Plaintiffs argued that Meta incorrectly claimed its data was never shared with third parties without users’ permission.
The state lawyers pursued up to $40bn in fines but Judge Mathew capped the penalty at $25bn, citing the company’s profit levels and proportionality. Meta argued that any amount above $3.4bn was unconstitutional.
New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the ruling sent a clear message that no corporation, no matter how powerful, can escape accountability. He compared Meta’s deceptive practices to “industrial pollution” in terms of psychological harm to children.
Meta has faced scrutiny from multiple states and regulators over its data‑privacy policies, including a $5bn fine from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2019. The company’s legal burden grows as more states pursue similar lawsuits.
For more on Meta’s financial penalties, see the California settlement and the New Mexico child‑safety case.
