New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $25 billion in Cambridge Analytica data privacy case, the largest penalty ever against the company

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion fine Wednesday, the largest penalty ever levied against the company, following a jury finding tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that the social media giant spent years misleading the public about how it handled Facebook user data. Judge Francis Mathew presided over the case, which stemmed from Meta’s role in the data privacy scandal that first drew global scrutiny to the company’s practices.

The order followed a two-week trial earlier this year in which a jury found that Meta committed 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws, each carrying a $5,000 penalty. The full penalty was calculated at $219 billion before Judge Mathew reduced it to $25 billion. State lawyers had sought up to $40 billion in fines, while Meta argued that anything beyond $3.4 billion would be unconstitutional. The fine is roughly equal to the company’s quarterly profits.

“Willful” violations spanning 11 years

Judge Mathew called the violations willful and said they spanned more than 11 years, from 2010 to 2021. The lies went to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices, he wrote in his order. Communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were designed to mislead the public, according to the judge. The jury also found that Meta intentionally misled the public on hate speech enforcement, specifically regarding how the company benefited from content that included hate speech and how its rules against such content were applied. State lawyers claimed the entire New Mexico population of roughly 2 million people was impacted by Meta’s dishonesty regarding user data.

Meta pledges appeal

Meta intends to appeal the decision. C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the ruling makes it all but impossible to do business in New Mexico. He characterized the lawsuit as seeking to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online, and said Meta is confident it will prevail on appeal.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez commented publicly on the case. “Today’s result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable,” Torrez said. He said powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law. Torrez also said the fine could have paid for construction of schools for the next 100 years.

A year of mounting penalties

The fine follows a series of major financial judgments against Meta this year. The company agreed to an $18 billion settlement with California over child safety. New Mexico separately fined Meta almost $1 billion this year for misleading the public about child safety on its platforms. In that case, the judge compared Meta to an industrial polluter, saying its pollution was the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children. The FTC previously levied a $5 billion fine against Meta in 2019 over its data privacy practices.

Roots in Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica worked with the Trump campaign during the 2016 US presidential election. The firm was an outgrowth of British defense contractor SLC Group, which specialized in influence operations and political work. Part of the New Mexico case revolved around Meta’s handling of a third-party app linked to the Cambridge Analytica data breach. Other parts involved the company’s data privacy policies and its efforts to mitigate misinformation on its platform.