US judge fines Meta $25 billion over Facebook privacy violations
Theo Al Jazeera English
A New Mexico state judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found the company misled Facebook users about their control over personal data. It is the largest penalty ever imposed on the tech giant. New Mexico says the money will fund the state's education system, while Meta has vowed to appeal.
On October 21 local time, New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew issued a ruling ordering Meta to pay a $25 billion fine, after a jury concluded the company had misled Facebook users about privacy violations. It is the largest penalty ever imposed on a technology conglomerate.
"Facebook promised users that they controlled their own data. That was not true," Judge Mathew declared in issuing the ruling.
Earlier, in September, the jury found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection law. State Attorney General Raul Torrez stressed that this is one of the largest verdicts a state has ever won against a corporation in US history.
"This ruling must be a signal, a clear message to Silicon Valley," Torrez said at a press conference in Albuquerque.
At the hearing, Meta's lawyer Matt Nicholson argued that a fine of up to $40 billion would be "a shock to the conscience," while New Mexico's lawyer Randi McGinn called for standing up to "tech moguls who think they are untouchable and can do whatever they want."
Nicholson also argued that "the jury made no finding that any New Mexican heard or saw these statements, or was harmed by them."
According to Attorney General Torrez, the entire fine will go into a fund serving the state's education system. The figure far exceeds the $5 billion penalty the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed on Facebook in 2019.
New Mexico accused Meta of deceiving users about who could access their personal information and how the platform handled harmful content. The jury found 26 of the 29 statements Meta and its leadership made about privacy and content moderation to be misleading.
Meta said it will appeal the ruling, a move that could reduce the final amount it must pay. In a statement, Chief Legal Officer CJ Mahoney expressed confidence the company would prevail on appeal.
"This ruling, along with the Attorney General's approach to enforcement, makes it nearly impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico," Mahoney said. "In essence, this lawsuit is an attempt to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules about what people are allowed to say online."
The lawsuit was filed in 2021, partly stemming from disclosures that Cambridge Analytica — a now-defunct British political consulting firm — collected the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users without consent and used it to build targeted political ads. The firm's clients once included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
This is Meta's second legal defeat in New Mexico within six months. In March, a jury concluded the company had misled users about how safe young people were on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and ordered it to pay $375 million in civil penalties. Meta was subsequently ordered to pay a further $567 million into the state's youth mental health fund and to implement safeguards for younger users.
