THE CRUNCH
A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25bn after a jury found the company misled consumers in a lawsuit stemming from Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm that harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. Judge Francis Mathew wrote that Facebook's wrongdoing, carried out over years and systematically broadcast to the public, went to the heart of its core business practices. The state's attorney general sued in 2021, accusing Meta of lying to users about who had access to their data and how it handled hate speech and misinformation.
The penalty could have been far larger. Mathew found that state law warranted more than $219bn, based on jurors' determination that Meta committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection laws, counted per Facebook user or state resident exposed to each misleading statement. State law allows up to $5,000 per violation and directs the money to New Mexico's school system. Meta had urged the judge to cap penalties at $3.45bn, arguing in court filings that it does not sell user data and that the state did not prove any consumer was actually misled.
The verdict lands amid a costly stretch for Meta. In August it agreed to pay $17bn to settle a nationwide lawsuit by state attorneys general alleging it designed addictive products that harmed children, and in March a separate Santa Fe jury found it misled users about young users' safety, leading to $375m in civil penalties plus $567m for a teen mental health fund. In its quarterly earnings report issued the same afternoon, Meta said net income came in well below Wall Street expectations because of a $9.9bn settlement payment in the US, even as quarterly revenue rose 26% to $64.6bn. A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.