Meta Platforms has been hit with a 25 billion dollar penalty in the United States, one of the largest ever imposed on a technology company by a single state. A New Mexico judge handed down the order on Wednesday, October 21, after a Santa Fe jury found that the company misled consumers about how much control they had over their personal data on Facebook. Meta says it will appeal.
The case goes back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which became public in 2018 and is still shaping how governments around the world – including India – think about social media and privacy.
What the court decided
Judge Francis Mathew of New Mexico's First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe set the penalty at 25 billion dollars. The state had asked for between 35 and 45 billion dollars. The money will go to New Mexico's education fund, according to reports.
The judgment follows a jury verdict in September. After deliberating for a little over two weeks, jurors found Meta liable for more than 43 million violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act. Attorney General Raúl Torrez said each violation carried a maximum penalty of 5,000 dollars, which in theory exposed the company to a penalty of more than 219 billion dollars.
The case at a glance
| Penalty ordered | 25 billion dollars |
| State's demand | 35 to 45 billion dollars |
| Judge | Francis Mathew, First Judicial District, Santa Fe |
| Violations found by jury | More than 43 million |
| Law applied | New Mexico Unfair Practices Act |
| Filed by | New Mexico Attorney General's office |
| Linked scandal | Cambridge Analytica (about 87 million profiles) |
| Meta's response | Will appeal |
Background: the Cambridge Analytica scandal
More than a decade ago, a personality quiz app on Facebook collected data not only from the people who took it but also from their friends. Data from roughly 87 million Facebook profiles ended up with Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm that used it to target political ads during the 2016 US presidential election. The firm shut down in 2018 as the scandal broke.
The fallout was global. Facebook faced investigations in several countries, and in India the episode fed into a wider debate on data protection that eventually led to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. In the US, 48 other states reached settlements with Facebook over similar allegations. New Mexico chose to fight the case in court instead, and local reports say about 350,000 New Mexicans were affected.
What both sides said
Torrez called the judgment the "single largest, if not the largest, single state verdict against the company in American history." He said Meta "lied to its users, to consumers, and to people all over the world" about the control they had over their information, and described the case as a warning to big tech.
Meta's Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney pushed back sharply. He said the ruling makes it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico," argued that the lawsuit amounted to a tax on speech, and said the company was "confident we will prevail on appeal."
Why it matters for Indian users
India is Facebook's and Instagram's largest market by number of users, so any legal shift in how Meta handles data is closely watched here. The New Mexico case shows that regulators are no longer satisfied with fines alone – they want companies to be honest about what happens to user data. In India, the government has also been pressing Meta on how its platforms work, including a recent request from MeitY to review feed algorithms on Facebook and Instagram.
For everyday users, the lesson is practical: check which third-party apps have access to your Facebook account, remove the ones you no longer use, and review your privacy settings regularly. Quizzes and games that ask you to log in with Facebook are exactly the kind of tools that started this whole saga.
What happens next
Meta's appeal will move the battle to New Mexico's higher courts, and a final resolution could take years. Interestingly, markets have so far taken the news in their stride, with reports noting that Meta's stock kept climbing after the ruling. Still, the size of the penalty could encourage other regulators to take a tougher line, and it adds to the legal pressure Meta is facing on issues ranging from privacy to child safety.
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