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A New Mexico state judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties for misleading Facebook users about their data, the largest fine the company has faced. Meta has said it will appeal.
What the court decided
According to Ars Technica, Judge Francis J. Mathew ruled that the trial record supported the highest penalty allowed under the state's Unfair Practices Act. A jury had found nearly 44 million violations of state consumer protection law. GSMArena puts the count at 43 million and says each violation carried up to $5,000 in penalties, after a two-week trial in Santa Fe. TechSpot also reports more than 43 million violations. The sources therefore differ slightly on the exact count.
The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica episode, in which the British consulting firm obtained data from millions of Facebook users without consent, Gadgets 360 notes. New Mexico accused Meta of lying to the state's Facebook users about who could access their data.
The judge's reasoning
Mathew wrote that the violations arose from repeated public representations over more than 11 years, touching multiple core aspects of the platform. Ars Technica reports that the findings covered user control of data, third-party data misuse, misinformation, hate speech and equal enforcement.
The opinion cites internal evidence, including a message in which Mark Zuckerberg laid out a plan to let users change privacy settings while not encouraging it. Meta flagged only two of 2,000 apps tied to data misuse, and narrowed its internal definition of misuse to limit notifications, the judge said.
Meta had argued for a penalty near its $5 billion Federal Trade Commission settlement over Cambridge Analytica, and expected to pay at most $3.4 billion, per Ars Technica. TechSpot gives the cap Meta sought as $3.45 billion. Mathew said the FTC deal "cannot be viewed in a vacuum" and that past penalties had not deterred deceptive practices.
How the number compares
New Mexico had sought up to $40 billion, according to Ars Technica. TechSpot says a local attorney sought $35 billion to $40 billion and that the judge found exposure of as much as $219 billion under state law.
New Mexico declined to join an $18 billion multistate settlement Meta reached earlier this year, Ars Technica reports. It adds that, according to The Verge, Meta's third-quarter report showed close to $10 billion paid for that settlement. GSMArena estimates Meta's profit at $42.6 billion for the first half of 2026, so the fine equals nearly 60% of it. TechSpot quotes analyst Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson & Co. as saying the fine is heavy but Meta is valued at nearly $2 trillion.