Facebook misled its users. A jury said so, and a judge agreed. On Wednesday, Oct. 21, a New Mexico court handed down the Meta $25 billion fine, the largest penalty the company has ever faced. It is five times bigger than the $5 billion the Federal Trade Commission collected over the same scandal.
Conservatives have plenty of reasons to distrust Big Tech. Even so, a good cause doesn’t justify every punishment. This one deserves a hard look, because the math behind it could someday land on a company much smaller than Meta.
Key Takeaways
- A Santa Fe judge ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
- A jury found 43,899,725 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act, counted by how many residents could have seen each misleading statement.
- The judge said the law supported more than $219 billion but cut the penalty to $25 billion.
- Meta plans to appeal and will likely argue the fine breaks the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.
- Accountability for deception is right, but a penalty this size from one state sets a dangerous precedent.
What the Meta $25 Billion Fine Is Really About
The case goes back to 2018. That year, the world learned that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had pulled data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued in 2021, Reuters reported.
However, the state went further than the data scandal itself. According to the New Mexico Department of Justice, the lawsuit also challenged Facebook’s claims about its efforts to fight misinformation and hate speech. In September, jurors found that 26 of 29 statements by the company and its leaders were misleading.
Then came the penalty. State law allows up to $5,000 per violation. As a result, the jury’s count of nearly 44 million violations put the maximum near $219 billion. Judge Francis Mathew cut that to $25 billion, still well below the $35 billion to $40 billion the state requested. He also wrote, “Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”
Where the Money Goes
According to Torrez, state law sends all of the money to New Mexico’s school system. That sounds generous. Still, it means a single courtroom just set the size of a multibillion-dollar education windfall without a vote from the legislature.
Facebook Earned the Scrutiny
Let’s be clear about one thing. Lying to customers is not free speech, and it is not a business strategy. Instead, it is fraud, and conservatives have always believed fraud should be punished.
The judge found the misconduct was willful and ran for more than 11 years, from 2010 to 2021, the BBC reported. He also wrote that messages between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were designed to mislead the public. If those findings hold, Meta deserves real consequences.
Moreover, many conservatives remember how these same platforms treated them. They saw posts throttled, accounts suspended, and stories buried under the banner of fighting misinformation. So there is little sympathy on the right for a company that preached transparency while hiding how it worked.
Why the Meta $25 Billion Fine Goes Too Far
Still, sympathy is not the standard. The Constitution is. The Eighth Amendment bars excessive fines, and the Supreme Court has said a fine cannot be grossly disproportionate to the offense, as Bloomberg Law explained.
Start with how the violations were counted. The jury didn’t count 44 million harmed people. Rather, it counted the number of state residents who could have viewed misleading statements. Under that logic, a single press release can become millions of offenses overnight. Any business with a website should find that troubling.
Next, look at the subject matter. Part of this case punished Facebook for what it said about policing misinformation and hate speech. Those are slippery categories. Today a progressive attorney general uses them against Meta. Tomorrow another one could use the same theory against a conservative news site or a small online store.
Finally, consider consistency. In 2024, New York’s attorney general won a $464 million penalty against Donald Trump and his companies. A state appeals court later struck it down as unconstitutionally excessive. Conservatives rightly called that case lawfare. The principle doesn’t change just because the defendant is Mark Zuckerberg.
Even the State Saw the Problem
Notably, New Mexico’s own lawyers admitted earlier this month that the maximum fine would wave a red flag in front of an appeals court, Bloomberg Law reported. A Marquette law professor told the outlet that Meta “at least has a colorable claim” on appeal. Meanwhile, Meta’s top lawyer, CJ Mahoney, said the ruling made it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico”, according to the BBC.
The Better Path Forward
There is a smarter way to hold Big Tech accountable. Congress could pass a clear national privacy standard with fixed, predictable penalties. That approach would protect families in every state, not just the ones with the most aggressive attorney general.
In addition, predictable rules protect honest companies. A startup can plan around a known penalty schedule. By contrast, it cannot plan around a jury multiplying every statement by the number of residents who might have seen it. Uncertainty like that rewards giants with armies of lawyers and crushes the little guy.
Consequently, the right answer is not to let Meta off the hook. It is to punish deception through the law as written, at a level a reasonable person would call proportionate, and then let the appeals courts check the excess.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did a judge issue the Meta $25 billion fine?
A New Mexico jury found Facebook misled users about data privacy, third-party access to personal information, and its handling of harmful content. The judge then set the penalty under the state’s Unfair Practices Act.
Will Meta have to pay the full amount?
Not yet. Meta has said it will appeal. The case will move to New Mexico’s appeals court and could reach the state Supreme Court, according to Bloomberg Law.
How does this fine compare to past penalties against Meta?
It is five times larger than the $5 billion FTC penalty from 2019. It also exceeds the multistate settlement Meta reached in August over teen mental health claims.
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Big Tech, big government, and your rights all collide in cases like this one. For more conservative commentary on the stories that matter, visit the World of Payne homepage. Then follow the World of Payne show on X, Facebook, and Instagram so you never miss an episode. Finally, share this post with a friend who still trusts Facebook with their data.
