Meta ordered to pay $25bn to New Mexico⁠.

A judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay $25bn after a jury found the company misled consumers about privacy on Facebook². Judge Francis Mathew wrote that Facebook's wrongdoing went to the heart of its core business practices². He found that a penalty of more than $219bn was warranted under state law, but cut it to $25bn².

The case goes back to Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm that harvested data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app². Its clients included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign¹. New Mexico sued in 2021 and chose to go to trial on its own rather than join a nationwide settlement that 48 other states signed¹.

In September the jury found 26 of 29 statements by the company and its leadership misleading, and counted more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection laws². The count was based on the number of people who were the audience for each misleading statement, not only Facebook users². State law allows a penalty of up to $5,000 a violation and sends the money to New Mexico's schools².

Meta had asked for the penalty to be capped at $3.45bn, saying the state had not proved that any consumer was actually misled². Its lawyers argued that an award ten times that figure or more would breach due process and would not survive an appeal¹. Meta plans to appeal, which could cut the number of violations and the penalty, and interest will build up while it does¹. The jury did reject the state's claim that Facebook made false statements about removing harmful content¹.

On the same afternoon as the order, Meta said its quarterly net income came in well below analysts' expectations because of a $9.9bn settlement payment in the US². Its quarterly revenue still rose 26% to $64.6bn². In March a Santa Fe jury had already ordered it to pay $375m in a separate case over young users' safety².

A US bill with a British lesson

This is an American state court applying American consumer law, and it binds nobody in Britain. Nothing reported so far says how the ICO or any other British body sees it. Meta will appeal, and the final figure may well be smaller.

The useful part is how the bill was counted. The jury did not tot up people who were harmed. It counted promises: each misleading statement, multiplied by everyone who might have heard it. For a company in Leeds or Bristol the point is plain. What you say about customer data, on your website, in your privacy notice or in a sales pitch, is a promise, and that includes what you say about the AI tools you have bought. The gap between the promise and what happens is where the risk sits, so it is worth someone reading the two side by side.

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