Meta ordered to pay $25 billion for misleading Facebook users about privacy
A New Mexico judge said Facebook's promise that users controlled their data 'was false'. It is Meta's biggest penalty ever, and it will appeal.
Facebook’s owner Meta has been hit with a $25 billion penalty, the largest it has ever faced, for misleading users about their privacy.
What happened
A state court in New Mexico, USA, ordered the penalty on October 21. In September, a jury in Santa Fe had found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection law.
The case goes back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal of the 2010s, when a personality-quiz app harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook profiles, which was then used for political targeting, including in the 2016 US election.
What the judge said
Judge Francis Mathew found that Facebook had knowingly hidden how it really handled users’ information. As quoted by Arise News: “Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data. This was false.”
According to SiliconANGLE, the state was first awarded $219.5 billion, which the judge cut to $25 billion. He still applied the highest penalty allowed per violation, $5,000, citing the repeated, wilful nature of the violations and the involvement of senior Facebook leaders.
New Mexico had asked for $35-40 billion. Meta argued the penalty should be no more than $3.4 billion.
The jury did side with Meta on one point. It rejected claims that Facebook made false statements about removing harmful content such as COVID-19 misinformation.
Meta’s response
Meta will appeal. Its chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the ruling “makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico” and that “we are confident we will prevail on appeal.” SiliconANGLE reports the penalty grows 15% for every year it goes unpaid.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said “no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.”
The bigger picture
- In 2019 the US Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion over the same scandal.
- In August, Meta agreed to pay about $18 billion in a separate settlement with nearly all other US states, over claims its apps were built to hook young users. New Mexico and Florida did not join.
- Meta still faces thousands of other cases on child safety, privacy and social media addiction.
What it means for Pakistani users
This ruling only applies in New Mexico, so it won’t change anything on your Facebook or Instagram tomorrow. But it is a useful reminder:
- Check Settings > Accounts Centre > Your information and permissions to see what Meta collects.
- Remove old apps and quizzes connected to your Facebook account.
- Think twice before logging into random apps “with Facebook”.
The Cambridge Analytica data leak began with exactly that kind of harmless-looking quiz.
Sources
This story was researched and drafted with AI assistance, then checked and edited by our editor before publishing.
