New Mexico judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties over misleading privacy statements, first reported by Engadget. The penalty will go to New Mexico's school system, where interest will accrue at 15 percent a year until the amount is paid in full, while Meta has said it will appeal.
The case, filed in 2021, was not directly about data harvested by Cambridge Analytica. It challenged Facebook's statements about user data, privacy settings and content moderation.
In September, a Santa Fe jury found that Meta violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act by misleading residents on those issues. The jury counted 43 million violations; at up to $5,000 each, the maximum penalty was about $219 billion.
New Mexico sought $35 billion to $40 billion, while Meta asked for no more than $3.45 billion. Mathew set the penalty at $25 billion.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal framed the dispute, but New Mexico's case focused on Facebook's own statements, not the harvested data. Mathew described Facebook's promised post-scandal investigation as ineffective and said the repeated misstatements were intentional and systematic.
The case is separate from a lawsuit Meta recently settled with nearly every other US state over child safety concerns. That settlement included nearly $459 million specifically for Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting claims. New Mexico skipped the settlement, opening the door to this trial.
Meta has said it will appeal. Chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney called the penalty “a tax on speech.”