‘Facebook’s wrongdoing’: Why has Meta been fined $25bn in New Mexico?

A judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay the state $25bn after finding that the Facebook owner intentionally misled users about the privacy of their personal data — a landmark penalty in the long-running fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The court ruled that Facebook's "wrongdoing" stretched over years and was systematically broadcast to the public. The judge found that a penalty of more than $219bn was warranted under state law, but reduced the award to $25bn. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez described it as one of the largest — if not the largest — single-state penalties ever imposed.

Torrez sued Meta in 2021 following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm, had harvested the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. The state argued that Meta knew outside companies had broad access to users' data yet lied to New Mexicans about who could see it, citing as evidence a 2010 Washington Post op-ed in which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg promised to safeguard user privacy.

Meta has vowed to appeal. Chief legal officer CJ Mahoney said the company was confident it would win on appeal and accused the attorney general's enforcement approach of making it all but impossible to operate in the state.

The ruling lands amid a wave of legal pressure on the company. A trial brought by a coalition of state attorneys general over children's data began in a California federal court in August, and six other states settled their Cambridge Analytica-related claims for $459m. Earlier this year, New Mexico won $942m in two separate trials against Meta.