Santa Fe, N.M. — Judge Fines Meta $25bn Over Facebook Data Privacy Lies

A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta on Wednesday to pay $25bn (£18.6bn), the largest penalty ever levied against the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent, after a jury found the company spent years lying to the public about how it handled user data, according to the BBC.

What did Judge Francis Mathew rule?

Judge Francis Mathew wrote that Meta's violations and misrepresentations about how Facebook data was used and shared were "willful" and stretched "more than 11 years," from 2010 to 2021, the BBC reported. He said communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were "designed to mislead the public." The $25bn figure is roughly equal to Meta's profits in a single quarter, the judge noted in the order.

Why did New Mexico sue Meta?

The lawsuit traced back to Meta's role, while still operating as Facebook, in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the consulting firm used data from millions of Facebook users for political work tied to the 2016 presidential election, according to the BBC. New Mexico also accused Meta of misleading the public about how it benefited from hate-speech content and how it enforced its own rules against such content.

What did the jury find?

Jurors determined Meta had violated state law more than 40 million times and had intentionally misled the public both on data-sharing claims and on its hate-speech enforcement, the BBC reported. State lawyers argued the entirety of New Mexico's roughly two million residents was affected by the company's dishonesty about how it controlled user data. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement carried by the BBC: "For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law. Today's result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable."

How much did each side want, and how is Meta responding?

• Full statutory penalty calculated from the violations: $219bn
• Final fine ordered by the judge: $25bn
• Amount New Mexico sought: up to $40bn
• Ceiling Meta argued was constitutional: $3.4bn

Meta's chief lawyer, CJ Mahoney, said the ruling makes it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico" and argued the case "seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online," per the BBC. Meta disputed the hate-speech allegations and said it will appeal, with Mahoney predicting the appeal will succeed.

How does this compare to Meta's other legal bills this year?

The $25bn New Mexico judgment tops an $18bn settlement Meta reached with California over child safety and a separate $5bn fine from the Federal Trade Commission, the BBC reported.

Timeline

• 2010–2021: Period covered by the judge's findings of willful data-privacy misrepresentations.
• 2016: Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook user data in political consulting tied to the presidential election.
• 2026 (earlier this year): Two-week trial held in New Mexico.
• Oct. 21, 2026: Judge Mathew orders the $25bn fine; Meta says it will appeal.

What to watch

• Whether Meta's appeal reduces or overturns the $25bn figure.
• Whether other state attorneys general file similar suits over data practices.
• How the ruling affects Meta's ongoing rollout of AI-focused subscription products, detailed in HTT News' earlier report on Meta's AI subscription plans.

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