Judge orders Meta to pay New Mexico $25B in Cambridge Analytica case

A judge in New Mexico ordered the technology giant Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for misleading users about its privacy and content policies.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) announced the judge’s order Wednesday, calling it “one of the single largest — if not the largest — single state verdict against the company in American history.”

“Today’s judgement from a state, which admittedly is not very big in terms of population, should be a clear warning to everyone in Big Tech, Mr. [Mark] Zuckerberg, Meta, social media companies, indeed AI companies,” Torrez said at a press conference.

The order from Santa Fe Judge Francis Mathew comes just weeks after jurors found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws when the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data from Facebook users for political ads during the 2016 election.

Following an expected appeals process, Torrez said the payment from Meta will be put toward public education in the state.

New Mexico was one of just two states that........

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