Court Slams Meta With $25bn Fine — Largest Ever For Lying About User Data Privacy
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been hit with its largest ever fine — $25bn (£18.6bn) — for lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data.
According to BBC, a judge in New Mexico ordered the penalty on Wednesday following a two-week trial earlier this year that found the company spent years misleading users about its data practices.
“The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” the judge said, adding they went to “the heart of Facebook’s core business practices”.
The fine stems from Meta’s role, then still operating as Facebook, in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from millions of Facebook users was harvested for political consulting, including work linked to the 2016 US Presidential election.
New Mexico had also accused Meta of intentionally misleading the public on how it benefitted from content that included hate speech, and how its rules against such content were enforced. The jury found the company intentionally misled the public on those claims too.
Meta disputed the accusations. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online,” said Meta’s head lawyer, CJ Mahoney.
Mahoney said the ruling made it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico” and disclosed that Meta intends to appeal.
According to lawyers for the state, the entire population of New Mexico — roughly two million people — was impacted by Meta’s dishonesty. The jury found Meta 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,” said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. “Today’s result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.”
State lawyers had sought up to $40bn in fines, while Meta argued anything beyond $3.4bn would be unconstitutional.
Judge Francis Mathew said Meta’s violations were “willful” and spanned “more than 11 years” from 2010 to 2021, adding that communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were “designed to mislead the public”.
While the full penalty calculated based on thousands of violations was $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced it to $25bn — roughly equal to Meta’s quarterly profit.
The judgment follows a $5bn fine by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 and an $18bn settlement with California over child safety.
New Mexico has been one of Meta’s most notable adversaries in court, having also fined the company almost $1bn this year for misleading the public about the safety of its platforms for children.
Despite the fines, Meta’s revenue increased 26% to $64.5bn between July and September, with profits tripling to $9.8bn, even as it spends over $135bn this year on AI infrastructure.
Source: BBC Technology
