In brief
In a landmark ruling, New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25 bn after a two‑week trial exposed the tech giant’s long‑standing deception over user data sharing. The judge cited more than 40‑million violations of state law spanning 2010‑2021 and called the company’s executives’ communications a deliberate attempt to mislead the public. Meta plans to appeal, but the fine represents the largest punishment yet inflicted on the platform and underscores the growing regulatory scrutiny of big tech’s data practices. The decision follows earlier hefty fines from California and the FTC, and signals that no corporation is immune to legal accountability.
Meta, the conglomerate behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been hit with the largest fine ever imposed on the company for its data handling practices. A judge in New Mexico ordered the payment of $25 bn after a two‑week trial revealed that the firm had spent years misleading the public about how it managed Facebook user data.
The judge found that the lies extended beyond Facebook’s data policies to the core of its business model. “The lies reach the heart of Facebook’s core businesses,” the ruling stated, emphasizing that the misrepresentations spanned 11 years from 2010 to 2021.
Meta’s chief lawyer, CJ Mahoney, warned that compliance would become “all but impossible” under New Mexico law, yet the firm maintains confidence that an appeal will succeed.
The penalty follows a string of other sanctions on Meta, including an $18 bn settlement with California over child‑safety concerns and a $5 bn fine from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for privacy violations.
New Mexico’s lawsuit began in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the firm exploited data from millions of Facebook users to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Lawyers for the state alleged that Meta’s top executives falsely claimed that user data was never shared with third parties without consent, contradicting extensive internal communications.
The court determined that the state’s population—roughly 2 million people—had been affected by this deception, with a jury tallying more than 40 million infractions.
In response, the New Mexico Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, remarked that powerful technology firms cannot operate beyond the reach of the law. The fine, capped at $25 bn, was chosen to approximate Meta’s quarterly earnings, reflecting the judge’s intent to make the penalty both punitive and proportionate.
Though Meta has not yet commented, the company now faces scrutiny not only for privacy but also for the psychological impact of its platforms on children – a claim echoed in a separate case where Meta was likened to an industrial polluter for its effect on youth.
The ruling underscores a broader trend of states applying regulatory measures traditionally reserved for physical pollution, applied here to digital “pollution” that shapes public perception and personal wellbeing.
