A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook.
Judge Francis Mathew handed down the amount. The state had sought $35 billion to $40 billion.
Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election.
Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook in a nationwide case, but New Mexico chose to take the social media company to court on its own.
Attorneys for New Mexico sought what could have been the largest judgement in U.S. history, arguing the company would only change its ways with a sum that affected its stock price.
Lawyers for Meta argued for paying no more than $3.4 billion. An award 10 times that or even more would violate due process, was unconstitutional and would not hold up under appeal, they said.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has said they money will go into a state fund for education.
Meta argued the state failed to prove misleading statements about privacy and that content moderation actually harmed New Mexicans. Interest on the penalty would accrue during an appeal, but the number of violations Meta is charged with could be reduced.
Meta attorney Matt Nicholson argued in court that a sum as high as $40 billion would be “shocking...
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