SANTA FE, New Mexico — A New Mexico judge on Wednesday ordered Meta Platforms to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found the company misled Facebook users about control of their personal data and other platform practices.
The ruling follows a September verdict finding more than 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer-protection law. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users was harvested through a third-party app and used for voter profiling and political targeting.
State District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew calculated that state law could support a penalty exceeding $219 billion, according to Reuters, but reduced the judgment to $25 billion. The Associated Press reported that the court found Facebook’s deception intentional.
Meta disputes the ruling and says it expects to prevail on appeal. The company argued that New Mexico failed to prove consumers were actually misled and had urged the judge to limit any penalty to about $3.45 billion. The judgment therefore is not final and payment could be delayed or reduced during a potentially lengthy appeals process.
The size of the award makes the case immediately significant for digital advertising. Meta derives nearly all of its revenue from advertising, while the New Mexico case directly examined representations about the user data underlying its platform and targeting business. The ruling does not by itself establish a nationwide privacy standard, but it creates a major legal and financial test for data-driven media platforms.
Radio News Now question: Will the judgment force Meta and other advertising platforms to strengthen public disclosures about the data used for targeting, or will the penalty be substantially reduced on appeal?
Sources: Reuters, October 21, 2026; Associated Press, October 21, 2026; New Mexico Department of Justice, September 25, 2026.