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Meta Hit With Record $25 Billion Penalty For Misleading Users On Data Privacy
Image: Collected
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been ordered to pay $25 billion to the state of New Mexico after a judge ruled the company systematically misled users about how it handled their personal data.
The ruling, issued on Wednesday by Judge Francis Mathew in Santa Fe, follows a September jury verdict that found Meta committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Jurors determined that 26 of 29 public statements made by the company and its senior leadership — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg — about data privacy, third-party access to user information, and efforts to curb hate speech and misinformation were misleading.
The case stemmed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. New Mexico sued Meta in 2021, accusing the company of lying to Facebook users about who could access their data after the British political consulting firm harvested personal information from tens of millions of users without proper consent and used it for political targeting during the 2016 US presidential election.
Under state law, each violation could have carried a penalty of up to $5,000, which would have produced a theoretical maximum of more than $219 billion. The judge reduced the award to $25 billion, describing Meta’s conduct as going “to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.” The money is expected to support New Mexico’s public school system.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the judgment one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed on a corporation in US history and a clear signal that tech companies will be held accountable. Meta, which plans to appeal, said the ruling makes it “all but impossible to do business” in the state and characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to regulate online speech.
The penalty is Meta’s largest to date and comes amid other major legal pressures on the company, including recent multi-state settlements related to youth mental health and platform safety.