New Mexico Judge Issues $25 Billion Privacy Fine Against Meta
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for violations of state consumer-protection laws related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a record-size data-privacy penalty.
A judge in New Mexico imposed a $25 billion civil penalty on Meta Platforms Inc. after a Santa Fe jury found the company had misled the public about user privacy, data harvesting and safety practices. The ruling, issued under state consumer-protection statutes, counted 43 million individual violations based on 26 of 29 statements deemed misleading.
"Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices," the judge wrote.
State attorney Randi McGinn argued the fine should reflect the company’s financial scale.
"This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," McGinn said.
Meta, which reported third-quarter revenue of $64.6 billion, said it will appeal the decision and had previously sought to limit the fine to $3.45 billion, contending that the state had not demonstrated direct financial harm to users. Under New Mexico law, any collected fine would be directed to the state’s public-school system.
The case stems from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and the fine represents the largest data-privacy penalty ever levied in the United States.