New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $25 billion over Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal

State District Court Judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion on Wednesday after a jury found the company had violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act more than 43 million times, in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The penalty is one of the largest-ever legal judgments against a technology company. Meta, then known as Facebook, disclosed in 2018 that private information of as many as 87 million Facebook users had been improperly obtained by political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which used the data to build profiles of American voters. New Mexico sued in 2021, alleging the company mishandled state residents' personal information.

Mathew wrote that Facebook's misrepresentations about users' control of their data were "not isolated incidents, but rather a systematic pattern of deception at the core of Facebook's business model."

Meta said it would appeal. Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said the ruling made it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico" and characterised the lawsuit as an attempt to impose "a tax on speech."

The verdict adds to a mounting legal burden for Meta. In August, the company agreed to an $18 billion multistate settlement over claims its platforms harmed young people — a charge that reduced Meta's quarterly operating income from nearly $23 billion to nearly $13 billion. New Mexico was not party to that settlement. Meta was also ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in a separate New Mexico case earlier this year over platform addiction claims.