Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion Over Cambridge Analytica Privacy Violations

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Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy

The penalty, one of the largest levied against a tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

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· 7:06 min

By Eli Tan and Cecilia Kang

Eli Tan reported from San Francisco, and Cecilia Kang from Washington.

Oct. 21, 2026

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion on Wednesday for deceiving users about its data privacy practices, one of the largest penalties levied against a tech giant.

New Mexico sued Meta in 2021 over a scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, saying the social media company had misled users with its public statements about their data privacy. Last month, after a two-week trial, a jury in the State District Court in Santa Fe ruled against Meta, saying the company had committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Each violation carried a penalty of up to $5,000.

On Wednesday, Judge Francis J. Mathew of the Santa Fe court issued the landmark penalty, writing that the company and its executives purposefully misled the public.

“The harm in this matter is difficult to overstate, and goes to the heart of Facebook’s basic business proposition,” Judge Mathew wrote in a 20-page judgment. He said the “extraordinary number of willful violations” that repeated over years “support the highest level of penalty.”

The order is the biggest blow yet to Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as it has racked up court losses over the harms that its social media platforms have caused users. States and consumers have filed thousands of lawsuits over issues such as how Facebook and Instagram endangered child safety, led to social media addiction, used people’s data without their consent and infringed on their privacy.

New Mexico has been leading the charge against Meta, and winning. In August, a New Mexico judge ordered the company to pay $567 million in damages after a jury ruled the company had enabled harm to young users, on top of a $375 million penalty from the same case in March.

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