{"id":690608,"date":"2026-10-22T02:53:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T02:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=690608"},"modified":"2026-10-22T02:53:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T02:53:47","slug":"new-mexico-court-slaps-meta-with-25-billion-data-privacy-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=690608","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico Court Slaps Meta With $25 Billion Data Privacy Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"
Image by Fritzober<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Please follow us on Truth Social<\/a>, X<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, Minds<\/a>, Telegram<\/a>, Rumble<\/a>, GETTR<\/a>, Gab<\/a>, Instagram<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Meta must pay $25 billion in penalties related to how it handled user data, a New Mexico court ruled Wednesday, according to a court filing obtained by CNBC. The ruling stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personality quiz operated by a third party harvested data from roughly 87 million Facebook user profiles and that data was then used by Cambridge Analytica to create targeted political ads for the 2016 election \u2013 including for the Trump campaign, ABC News reported. The jury in the case attributed the more than 43 million violations of the state\u2019s unfair practices act to Facebook\u2019s harvesting of data from Facebook users\u2019 profiles.<\/p>\n

The Trump campaign was one of the clients of Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election. Facebook settled jointly with 48 other states, ABC News reported. New Mexico, however, decided to go it alone and file its own case, which went to trial.<\/p>\n

The finding of fact by Judge Francis Mathew stated that Facebook\u2019s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, had misrepresented the social media company\u2019s data privacy practices to the public. The finding went on to state that those misrepresentations were part of a unified plan to deceive the public and that Facebook never conducted the privacy review that it had promised after the Cambridge Analytica disclosures had become public. The findings also stated that Facebook\u2019s internal review of apps was \u201cwillfully ineffective\u201d due to several factors including the attempts of senior executives to slash spending, scarce enforcement resources, poor investigative methods and a desire to avoid creating a precedent.<\/p>\n

In terms of whether or not Meta actually deceived users, Mahoney told CNBC that Meta expected to win its appeal and that this ruling would leave it almost unable to operate in the state of New Mexico. CBS News quoted him calling the suit a \u201ctax on speech.\u201d The company had already announced an appeal of the verdict handed down in September. (The suit was first filed by then-NM Attorney General Balderas in 2021.)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now New Mexico Attorney General Ra\u00fal Torrez. CNBC reported that Torrez said the big technology companies have behaved as if the law did not apply to them, but that in New Mexico, they will be held accountable. And the money, under the state constitution, will go to education funding, which by his estimate could cover building new schools for 100 years, though it is held in place while the appeal moves forward. He called the ruling one of the biggest state verdicts against a company in U.S. history. Torrez had inherited the case after his predecessor, Hector Balderas, had brought the case in 2021.<\/p>\n

That case involved a host of child safety and mental health complaints connected to the use of personal data by third parties including Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US presidential election. While that matter was resolved in a federal case before a group of state attorneys general across the country with a $17 billion settlement, the New Mexico matter was a state case that went to trial. ABC News reported that the stock price of Facebook\u2019s parent company rose some 2% around the time the penalty was disclosed, on the day that the company was to report on its most recent quarter. Other big losses for the company in the state included a $375 million verdict under the state\u2019s unfair practices act in a child safety case in March followed by a judge\u2019s order to pay $567 million to an abatement fund after he ruled that the company\u2019s conduct was a public nuisance.<\/p>\n

‘NO AD’ subscription for CDM! Sign up here and support real investigative journalism and help save the republic!<\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image by Fritzober Please follow us on Truth Social, X, YouTube, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Gab, Instagram Meta must pay $25 billion in penalties related to how it handled user data, a New Mexico court ruled Wednesday, according to a court filing obtained by CNBC. The ruling stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which… Continue reading New Mexico Court Slaps Meta With $25 Billion Data Privacy Penalty<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-border-security","category-immigration","category-immigration-reform","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}