Judge orders Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion for misleading Facebook users about privacy
It is the largest penalty ever imposed on the company and grows out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A New Mexico state judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found the company had misled Facebook users about how it handled their personal data. In September, jurors found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law, and each violation carried a civil penalty of up to $5,000. The Record reports that the initial award of $220 billion was cut to $25 billion by District Court Judge Francis Mathew, and that Meta will owe 15 percent annual interest until the fine is paid. The case stems from Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that obtained data on as many as 87 million Facebook users and used it to profile voters for targeted ads, including during the 2016 election. In his ruling, the judge wrote that the deception was intentional: "Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data. This was false." According to the Associated Press, as published by SecurityWeek, the award far exceeds the $5 billion fine the Federal Trade Commission imposed on Facebook in 2019. Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the judgment "an unambiguous message" to Silicon Valley. Meta criticized the ruling and the state's approach to enforcement.