Judge orders Meta to pay New Mexico $25bn over privacy claims.

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25bn after a jury found it misled Facebook users about who could see their data. It is the largest penalty ever imposed on the company, and Meta says it will appeal.

District Judge Francis Mathew issued the ruling on 21 October. Last month a jury found Meta responsible for more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection law and judged 26 of 29 statements by the company and its leaders on privacy and content moderation to be misleading. "Facebook promised users that they controlled their data. This was false," the judge said. Attorney General Raul Torrez said the money will go into a fund for the state's schools.

The case was filed in 2021 and grew partly out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from up to 87 million Facebook users was taken without consent and used for political ad targeting. The award is five times the $5bn the US Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook in 2019. It is Meta's second loss in New Mexico this year; in March a jury found it had misled users about young people's safety, with $375m in penalties and a further $567m ordered later.

The final bill could change. Meta's chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said the company is confident of winning on appeal and called the case a tax on speech. Meta's lawyers argued that the jury made no finding that any New Mexican saw the statements or was harmed by them.

For advertisers, the direct effect is small for now, but the direction is clear: US states are willing to put very large numbers on privacy claims. Brands that rely on Meta's targeting, in the Gulf as elsewhere, should expect more pressure on data use and keep their own consent and first-party data practices in order.