New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay $25 Billion for Privacy Violations
A state judge ruled that Meta must pay $25 billion for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's unfair practices law tied to the Cambridge Analytica data breach.
A New Mexico district court ordered Meta Platforms Inc. to pay $25 billion in penalties after finding the company responsible for over 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law. The ruling stems from the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which revealed that a personality-quiz app collected data from millions of Facebook users and their friends without consent.
Judge Francis J. Mathew wrote that Facebook had promised users control over their data, a claim he deemed false. The case, filed in 2021, focuses on the app "thisisyourdigitallife," which was used by about 300,000 individuals but harvested information from roughly 87 million profiles.
Meta banned the app in 2015 and later requested Cambridge Analytica delete the data. Cambridge Analytica ceased operations in May 2018 after the scandal, which had involved the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
The penalty follows earlier settlements, including a $725 million class-action deal in December 2022 and a $5 billion FTC fine in 2019. In August, Meta also reached an $18 billion settlement with most U.S. states and territories for child-safety measures, allocating $459 million to Cambridge Analytica-related claims.
"Meta intends to appeal the decision," said C.J. Mahoney, Meta's chief legal officer.