Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty to New Mexico in data privacy case

Oct 21 (Reuters) - A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms on Wednesday to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data, hitting the company with one of the largest financial penalties in US history.

The ruling came in a ‌case stemming from allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their ‌consent. New Mexico had sued Meta, accusing it of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data.

"Facebook's wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the ​heart of Facebook's core business practices," Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order, which came more than three weeks after the verdict.

Mathew found that a penalty of more than $219 billion was warranted based on state law, but he reduced the figure to $25 billion.

In a statement, C.J. Mahoney, Meta's chief legal officer, said the company is confident it will win on appeal.

"This ruling, and the Attorney General's approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico," Mahoney said. "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new ‌rules for what people can say online."

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl ⁠Torrez said in a statement after the ruling the penalty was one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in US history.

Meta previously faced a $5 billion penalty from the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Six other states settled their lawsuits against Meta related ⁠to Cambridge Analytica for $459.2 million as part of a $17.1 billion multistate settlement the company reached in August to resolve states' claims that the company's platforms had harmed teen mental health.

New Mexico's attorney general sued Meta in 2021 following revelations that Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app.

The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users ​in ​New Mexico about who had access to their data and its handling of hate speech and misinformation posted ​on the platform. It alleged the company knew third parties had broad ‌access to users' data and tolerated hate speech or other harmful content when it benefited the company's bottom line.