Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica Case
A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties over its handling of user data and platform content, marking one of the company’s largest legal setbacks of the year.
The ruling stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed how data from millions of Facebook users was improperly obtained and used for political advertising. A New Mexico jury found in September that Meta misled consumers about how it protected their data and prevented misinformation and hate speech on its platforms.
The case was based on a 2021 complaint filed after revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting. The court found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s unfair-practices law, resulting in the $25 billion penalty.
The decision extends the legal consequences of the scandal well beyond the original controversy, with regulators and courts continuing to examine Meta’s privacy practices and the safeguards it claimed to provide for users and the wider public.