New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $25 billion — CNBC

A court in the U.S. state of New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty in a data privacy case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As CNBC reports, the decision on the final amount of the recovery was disclosed in a court filing on October 21.

Decision after jury verdict

In September, a jury in a Santa Fe court found Meta liable for misleading state residents about how the company protects and collects user data, as well as prevents the spread of harmful information on its services.

The jury found more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. A civil penalty of up to $5,000 could have been imposed for each of them. The court filing states that the amount awarded to the state was $219.5 billion, but the judge reduced the final recovery to $25 billion.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

Lawsuit filed in 2021

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by then-New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas. The state's current attorney general, Raúl Torrez, oversaw the trial. CNBC contacted Meta for comment on the court ruling.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted in 2018, before Facebook was renamed Meta. It involved allegations that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained access to data from 87 million Facebook users. In 2022, Meta agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit related to the scandal.

CNBC also notes that Meta previously settled a number of data privacy lawsuits under an August agreement worth nearly $17 billion with a coalition of state attorneys general. New Mexico was not a participant, so proceedings in this case continued separately.