Meta ordered to pay $25 billion for deceiving users about privacy on Facebook

A New Mexico judge has ordered tech giant Meta to pay the state a staggering $25 billion following a jury's finding that the company deceived users regarding privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez described the verdict as one of the largest, if not the largest, state penalties against a company in American history.

The money is earmarked for New Mexico's education system, with the potential to fund schools for the next 100 years. Meta's representatives have stated their intention to appeal the decision, which they argue would violate due process and is unconstitutional. The case centered around the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the now-defunct firm harvested data from approximately 87 million Facebook profiles and sold it to a political consulting firm for targeted ads.

The state argued that Facebook's public statements about privacy were misleading and that content moderation on the platform harmed New Mexicans.