Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion After Court Finds 43 Million Privacy Violations

Summary: A New Mexico state court ordered Meta to pay 25 billion in penalties on Wednesday over more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law, with Judge Francis J. Mathew ruling that Facebook's promise that users controlled their data was false. The case, filed in 2021, grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a personality quiz app called "thisisyourdigitallife" collected data from around 300,000 takers and their friends, amassing 87 million profiles; Meta says it will appeal.
Bottom line: The penalty is tied to 43 million violations counted under one state's consumer protection law, and Meta's chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney says the company will appeal - a reminder that per-violation state statutes can price a single data-handling failure at billions.

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