A New Mexico judge ruled Wednesday that Meta must pay $25 billion to the state after a jury found last month that the social media giant had deceived users in a case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to media reports.
Meta slammed the case as “a tax on speech. The penalty comes a couple of months after Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle claims brought by 48 other states, including allegations tied to Cambridge Analytica.
“This ruling… makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Meta said in a statement. “We are confident we will prevail on appeal.”
This case was “about whether corporations can mislead consumers about what happens to their personal information without facing meaningful consequences. Meta has faced a slew of lawsuits in recent months. In a landmark trial that concluded in March, Meta and YouTube were convicted by a Los Angeles jury , which found both companies were responsible for a teenager’s social media addiction.
Jurors in the New Mexico trial found that the misconduct affected all of the state’s more than 2.1 million residents. Earlier this year, New Mexico won nearly $1 billion in combined penalties against Meta in a separate case over harms to children. In March, a jury in that case ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding the company liable for endangering children by making them vulnerable to predators on its platforms, among other harms. That same month, Meta agreed to pay up to $17.7 billion to 52 US states, plus Washington, DC, to settle claims that it deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the public about the risks and unlawfully collected data from children under 13. In September, TikTok agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and enact limits for teen users, avoiding a trial over claims related to child safety on the platform. That jury awarded the teenager $6 million.
Revelations at the time showed that the firm had obtained data gathered through a personality quiz app called “thisisyourdigitallife,” which was installed by about 270,000 users but also collected information on their friends. “We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement in September. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez hailed the ruling as a “historic” win. New Mexico stood its ground,” Torrez said in a statement.
TikTok previously settled other cases that were headed for trial, including a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by a young woman and a suit from a Kentucky school district.
