2026.10.24. The Fair Economy — A U.S. federal court has ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion fine, finding that Facebook deceived consumers about how it protected user data during the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The US District Court for the District of New Mexico issued the ruling on the 22nd (local time).
The court determined that Meta deliberately misled the public for years about how it handled and controlled Facebook users' data. In his opinion, Judge Francis Mathew of the U.S. District Court for New Mexico wrote that communications among senior executives, including Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, were "designed to mislead the public." Judge Mathew stated, "The lies reach beyond Facebook's data practices into the 'heart of its core business practices.'"
On September 25, a jury found that Facebook violated the state's consumer protection law more than 43 million times. The jury recognized 26 deceptive statements out of 29 items reviewed, related to access to personal data, misinformation, and hate speech. The jury determined that Facebook's violations affected all approximately 2.1 million residents of the state during the 2016 presidential election.
State law allows fines of up to $5,000 per violation, with the collected amounts allocated to local school systems. The total fine based on the number of violations was calculated at $219.5 billion, but Judge Mathew reduced it to $25 billion. New Mexico had sought $35 billion to $40 billion, while Meta argued the amount should be capped at $3.45 billion.
New Mexico filed suit against Facebook in 2021, accusing the company of deceiving users about third-party apps' access to their data and failing to notify them in advance of its use of that data. Meta's legal team argued that the social network did not sell data that could identify users.
New Mexico is the only state to bring this scandal to court. Other states settled their lawsuits in late August as part of a broad agreement with Meta over minor protection, receiving $459 million (about 610 billion won). New Mexico did not participate in that settlement. Cambridge Analytica used data from tens of millions of Facebook users without consent for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.
Meta has appealed the ruling. A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Meta has faced several legal setbacks this year. In March, a Los Angeles jury ruled for the first time that Meta and Google were responsible for the addictive effects of Instagram and YouTube on a teenager.
Earlier in March, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay a $375 million civil penalty for deceptive statements regarding minor protection, and the court ordered the company to pay $567 million into a youth mental health fund and implement additional protective measures.
According to the ruling, the court imposed a civil penalty of $219.4986 billion (about 291 trillion won) on Meta, but reduced the final amount to $25 billion. Judge Francis Mathew ordered the company to pay 15% annual interest until the debt is fully repaid.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, collected the personal information of up to 87 million users without their consent through a Facebook app. The company used an external app in the form of a personality test to extract not only the data of app users but also information about their Facebook "friends." Based on this, it analyzed voter tendencies and ran targeted political ads for the Trump campaign.
The scandal came to light through media reports in 2018. Facebook apologized to users, saying "control over personal information lies with the users," and promised policy improvements, but it was revealed that the company actually neglected unauthorized access by third-party external apps.
In December 2022, Meta settled a class-action lawsuit related to the Cambridge Analytica data breach for $725 million (about 960 billion won). That settlement was the largest in US data privacy class-action history. Meta did not admit wrongdoing but said it had 'overhauled' its privacy approach over the past three years. The New Mexico ruling is separate from that settlement.
This fine is the largest ever imposed on Meta. In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Meta $5 billion (about 5.6 trillion won) over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The New Mexico ruling is five times that amount and is unusually large for a state-level sanction against a tech company.
This ruling is one of a series of legal setbacks Meta has faced this year. In August, it reached a settlement of up to $18 billion (about 25 trillion won) with 47 US states over youth social media addiction lawsuits. The settlement includes limiting users under 18 to two hours of use per day, blocking nighttime access from midnight to 6 a.m., and introducing a 'school mode' during the academic year. New Mexico did not participate in that settlement either.
Following the ruling, Meta's stock rose 2%. The company was set to announce quarterly earnings later that afternoon. The market views the immediate financial impact as limited, considering the possibility of an appeal and long-term legal battles. Meta's market capitalization is approximately $2 trillion (about 2,656 trillion won).
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