Madar (International) - A judge in the US state of New Mexico on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, ordered Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25bn after a jury found the company had spent years misleading the public about how it handled Facebook user data, the BBC, AP and Reuters reported.
It is the largest fine ever imposed on the company. Judge Francis Mathew said Meta's violations were "willful" and spanned "more than 11 years", from 2010 to 2021. The full penalty, calculated on thousands of violations, came to $219bn before he reduced it to $25bn. The state had sought up to $40bn, while Meta argued anything above $3.4bn would be unconstitutional.
The jury had found the company violated the state's consumer protection laws more than 40 million times. The lawsuit, filed in 2021, stemmed partly from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the political consulting firm obtained data from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent.
"No corporation is too powerful to be held accountable," New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said, adding that the money would go to a state education fund. Meta's chief legal officer CJ Mahoney said the company would appeal, saying the ruling made it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico".
