6 days ago
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A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for misleading users about how it handled their data and for failing to prevent misinformation on Facebook.
The ruling could be the largest penalty in Meta's history. Last month, Meta settled a child-safety lawsuit brought by a group of US states for $18 billion.
The New Mexico case focused on Meta's handling of user records that Cambridge Analytica used for campaign purposes during the 2016 election. New Mexico alleged that Facebook misrepresented the extent of users' control over their data on the app.
"Facebook's wrongdoing—over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public—goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," Judge Francis J. Mathew wrote in the ruling. "It relates to the way in which Facebook induces people onto the platform and ultimately keeps them there."
In a statement, Meta's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the penalty "makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico."
"At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online," Mahoney said. "We are confident we will prevail on appeal."
A jury ruled against Meta last month, finding the company committed nearly 50 million violations of a New Mexico law prohibiting deceptive trade practices. Each violation carries a penalty of up to $5,000.
Some Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were deposed in the case. New Mexico first sued the company in 2021, and the case went to trial last month.
In internal Meta communications presented at the trial, Zuckerberg appeared to obfuscate methods for users to hide their data.
"Give them a chance to change their privacy settings but obviously don't encourage it," Zuckerberg wrote in one internal message.
Meta's next move remains unclear. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
This is a breaking news story. It will be updated.
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Truman Dickerson is the Weekend News Fellow at Business Insider, based in New York City. He covers trending tech and business news. He previously reported for The Boston Globe's Express Desk. He graduated from Boston University, where he served as editor in chief of The Daily Free Press, BU's student-run newspaper.Contact him at Tdickerson@insider.com
Natalie is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Business News team covering the AI and data center boom.She was previously on BI's Legal Affairs team, where she handled major cases coming out of state and federal court, as well as bankruptcy. Her coverage often focused on stories at the intersection of law, business, politics, and technology. Natalie has covered Donald Trump’s criminal and civil cases, the wave of lawsuits against the second Trump administration, the indictment and criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the legal battles facing Elon Musk and his companies. Natalie came to Business Insider in June 2021 as a breaking news reporter, focusing on the most interesting angles on the day's trending news. Natalie largely drove BI’s coverage around the fatal “Rust” shooting involving Alec Baldwin and the disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito.Prior to joining BI, Natalie worked for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and The Brooklyn Paper. She has an extensive background covering crime and courts. During her more than 12-year journalism career, she did a stint covering the police beat out of the New York Police Department's headquarters. Natalie, a Brooklyn native, graduated from Brooklyn College in 2012 with a degree in journalism.
Charles Rollet is Business Insider's tech correspondent in San Francisco, where he focuses on breaking major news about the AI industry. In 2025, he led an investigation which revealed that Scale AI had inadvertently exposed confidential data about its workers and clients. In 2026, he was the first to break the news that Meta had halted a controversial keystroke tracking program.Prior to joining BI, Charles worked at TechCrunch covering startups and VC in San Francisco. Before that, he was based in Southeast Asia for a decade, where his work won a Gerald Loeb award and was nominated for a Society of Publishers in Asia award. His reporting on the surveillance industry led to US human rights sanctions on five Chinese security camera manufacturers.Charles is especially interested in how frontier AI models are built and trained. He has a master's degree in business reporting from NYU and a bachelor's degree in history from Northwestern.You can contact Charles securely on Signal at charlesrollet.12 or +1-628-282-2811. Charles keeps sources anonymous. Please use a non-work device to reach out.
