A New Mexico judge hit Meta with one of the largest penalties ever put on a tech company, ordering them to pay $25 billion for deceiving users about their data privacy.
A jury ruled against Meta after a two week trial, finding them guilty of 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Each of those penalties costs $5,000.
Judge Francis J. Mathew of the State District Court in Santa Fe ordered on Wednesday that the tech giant pay $25 billion, though that amount was lowered from more than $200 billion. The $25 billion penalty will be hit with a 15% interest rate for each year it is not paid.
The judge wrote in his filing:
The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act – $5,000 per violation found by the jury.
“The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez after the jury’s decision. “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
New Mexico prosecutors argued that Facebook deceived users over a data breach from a <a href="https://bitcomme.com/rotoplas-third-quarter-2026-results/” title=”Rotoplas: Third Quarter 2026 Results”>third-party harvesting data and then selling that data to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm.
Torrez has also accused Meta of failing to protect minors on the platform from sexual abuse and trafficking.
“Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” the attorney general said after filing suit in 2023.
He said the new judgement should act as a warning to all tech companies. He also revealed the money would go directly to education funding in the state.
“This judgement should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley,” he said.
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