A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for deceiving Facebook users about who had access to their personal data — and every dime goes to the state, not the 87 million people whose information was harvested without consent.
Judge Francis Mathew handed down the penalty Wednesday after jurors found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection laws. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called it "one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history." The state had sought $35 billion to $40 billion; Meta argued for no more than $3.4 billion, calling the higher figure "shocking to the conscience," according to Meta attorney Matt Nicholson.
Here is the racket: Zuckerberg built his empire vacuuming up your data. Cambridge Analytica pulled profiles from roughly 87 million users through a third-party personality quiz and sold the haul to generate targeted political ads, including for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. When the bill comes due, the state collects. State law directs the penalty money into New Mexico's school fund, Torrez told reporters. The people whose data was actually stolen see nothing.
New Mexico was the only state to take Meta to trial. Forty-eight other states settled in August for $18 billion, with Florida the only other holdout. That settlement included an agreement releasing Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica breach — a bipartisan deal that let the company buy its way out of accountability across the country.
The state's case stretched beyond privacy. Prosecutors argued Facebook allowed "misinformation" and violent content to proliferate. Defense attorneys pushed back, saying the company's content moderation policies are robust and that "freedom of speech has to be considered," KABC-TV reported. The jury bought the state's argument that Facebook's public statements about privacy and moderation deceived the entire population of New Mexico, not just users. Jurors found 26 of 29 company statements were misleading.
But Meta's lawyers raised a point nobody in the press seemed eager to highlight: "The jury didn't make findings that any New Mexican heard or saw these statements, or was harmed by them," Nicholson argued at an Oct. 1 hearing. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Virginian-Pilot both reported the quote; neither lingered on its implications.
New Mexico attorney Randi McGinn urged the court to "speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price." She's right about one thing: money is the only language these tech titans understand. It's just convenient that her client — the state — is the one collecting the translation.
Meta says it will appeal. Interest accrues during that process, and the number of violations could be reduced. Whether the penalty survives is an open question. The deeper one is why the people whose data was stolen never get a seat at the table — only the state does.
