Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion in New Mexico Data Privacy Case

A New Mexico state judge ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty on Wednesday following a jury verdict that found the company liable for deceiving users about Facebook’s data privacy and content moderation policies. According to the Times of India, the legal battle stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the jury found that Meta committed more than 43 million individual violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.

TheWrap reports the jury reached this verdict on September 25, noting that the lawsuit was tied to a 2021 case regarding the unauthorized collection of data from as many as 87 million users.

New Mexico District Court Judge Francis Mathew issued the judgment, which reduced an initial award of $219.5 billion down to $25 billion, according to the Times of India. TheWrap states that Meta plans to appeal the judgment, while the company has argued that New Mexico failed to prove consumers were misled or harmed by its statements. The New York Times and Variety both describe the penalty as one of the largest ever levied against the tech giant.

Brief written by urgent.news from Variety, Times of India, TheWrap, The New York Times — 4 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.