Meta fined $25bn for 'lies' over user data privacy

ByKali Hays Technology reporter. 21 October 2026, 19: 01 BST.

Key points

• It follows a $5bn fine levied by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 against the firm over its data privacy practices.
• New Mexico's lawsuit stemmed from the role of Meta, then still doing business as Facebook, in what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
• Judge Francis Mathew on Wednesday was direct in his decision to fine Meta an amount roughly equal to its profits each quarter.
• Communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were "designed to mislead the public", Judge Mathew wrote in his order.
• Meta, the firm behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has been hit with the largest ever fine against it for its business practices.

Notably, a judge in New Mexico on Wednesday ordered the firm to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) after a two-week trial earlier this year that discovered it had spent years lying to the public concerning how it handled Facebook user data.

"The lies extend beyond Facebook's data practices as well, " the judge remarked, adding they went to "the heart of Facebook's core business practices".

Meta's head lawyer CJ Mahoney remarked the ruling produced it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico". The firm intends to appeal, a move Mahoney stated will be successful.

Notably, the fine is the largest to date against Meta. It has either been fined or agreed to settle a number of other lawsuits this year, including an $18bn agreement with California over child safety.

That firm utilized data and information from millions of Facebook users as part of its work in political consulting, including on work related to the 2016 US Presidential election. It saw Donald Trump elected for the first time.

New Mexico had additionally accused Meta of intentionally misleading the public on how it benefitted from content that included hate speech, and how such rules against it were enforced. The jury discovered the business had intentionally misled the public on those claims, too.

Meta disputed those accusations. "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online, " Mahoney continued.

When in reality it had been, lawyers for New Mexico sued the firm over numerous statements Meta executives had created over the years that user data was never shared with or accessed by third parties without a user's permission.

They asserted that the entire population of the state, roughly two million residents, was impacted by Meta's dishonesty regarding the way it controlled user data. A jury discovered that Meta had violated state laws more than 40 million times.

"For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law, " New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez remarked Wednesday.

"Today's result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable."

Meanwhile, the state lawyers sought up to $40bn in fines against Meta. Meta had argued anything beyond $3.4bn would be unconstitutional.

He remarked Meta's violations of law and misrepresentations to the public concerning how their Facebook data was applied and shared were "willful" and spanned "more than 11 years", stretching from 2010 to 2021.

While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.

New Mexico has been one of Meta's most notable adversaries in court. The state this year additionally fined Meta almost $1bn for misleading the public concerning the safety of its social media platforms for children.

In practice, the judge overseeing that lawsuit ultimately compared Meta to an industrial polluter of the air, with its form of pollution being "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children".

California and a number of other states had collectively sued Meta over similar matters related to a lack of child safety features on Meta's platforms and resulting harms to children.

Meta and the states reached a mutual settlement accord. It did not include a fine or any admission of wrongdoing, to end that case only a few days into what was anticipated to be a multi-week trial.

For now, meta fined $25bn for ' lies' over user data privacy remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.