A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25bn in penalties after a jury ruled the social media company misled consumers about the privacy of their personal data.
The case, brought by New Mexico’s attorney general in 2021, followed revelations that the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had collected personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party application without their knowledge.
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Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, used the data for voter profiling. New Mexico alleged that Meta had deceived state residents about who could access their information and knowingly tolerated hate speech and harmful content when doing so served its commercial interests.
Judge Francis Mathew determined that state law supported a penalty exceeding $219bn but opted to reduce it to $25bn.
In his order, the judge wrote: “Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”
Last month, Jurors found that Meta and its management had made 26 misleading public statements on data privacy, hate speech and other matters. This allegedly amounted to more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws.
The state’s legal team had sought between $35bn and $40bn, while Meta argued penalties should be capped at $3.45bn, contending it does not sell user data and that no individual consumer was proven to have been misled.
Meta signalled it would challenge the ruling.
CJ Mahoney, the company’s chief legal officer, said Meta is confident of prevailing on appeal.
Mahoney said: “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, 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.”
The judgment compounds a growing legal burden. Meta paid a $5bn fine to the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over the same Cambridge Analytica scandal, and earlier this year New Mexico secured $942m across two trials alleging the company facilitated sexual exploitation of minors on its platforms.
The company also faces thousands of additional lawsuits over social media’s impact on young users.
Separately, Meta reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $64.6bn, up 26% year-over-year. Net income rose 264% to $9.86bn, with diluted earnings per share of $3.83.
Total costs and expenses climbed 68% to $51.61bn, driven largely by a $9.89bn charge tied to an agreement with 52 attorneys general to resolve teen mental health litigation for up to $18.59bn.
Excluding that charge, operating income would have reached $22.88bn and diluted EPS $7.40. Ad impressions grew 10% and average price per ad rose 14%. Meta guided for fourth-quarter revenue of $73bn to $76bn.
