A New Mexico court has ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25 billion for misleading users about their privacy over several years, in what is being described as the largest penalty against a technology company in the United States.
A jury in the state's First Judicial District Court had earlier found that Facebook violated New Mexico's consumer protection law more than 43 million times. At the maximum penalty of $5,000 per violation, that worked out to about $219 billion. Judge Francis Mathew reduced the figure to $25 billion.
"Facebook promised users that they controlled their data. This was false," the judge wrote in his order, adding that the company's conduct was intentional and broadcast to the public over years.
The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political consulting firm is alleged to have harvested data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles without consent to build targeted political advertising during the 2016 US election season. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the ruling an unambiguous message to Silicon Valley. Under the state constitution, the money goes towards education spending.
Meta had argued the penalty should be capped at $3.4 billion, saying a larger award would violate due process, and it is expected to appeal. Legal experts said the appeal could take years, and the number of violations may itself be trimmed. The award dwarfs an $18 billion multistate settlement Meta reached this summer over claims that its platforms harmed young users.
The ruling is subject to appeal, but its significance is large. Bloomberg Law reported that the penalty will accrue 15 per cent interest annually until paid, against New Mexico's projected general-fund revenue of about $14.8 billion. In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission had fined Meta $5 billion over the same scandal. Analysts noted Meta is worth nearly $2 trillion and is likely to keep appealing such cases, so the immediate hit to its valuation is expected to be limited.