"Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data," Mathew wrote in his ruling. "This was false."
Judge Francis J. Mathew's ruling and the $25 billion penalty
A New Mexico state court on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties after finding more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law. The decision, handed down by state District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew, faulted Meta and Facebook for making misleading statements to New Mexico consumers about how their data would be handled.
The Cambridge Analytica chain: "thisisyourdigitallife" and 87 million profiles
The lawsuit stems from the Cambridge Analytica revelations that surfaced in 2018. According to the record in the case, the data originated from a personality‑quiz application called "thisisyourdigitallife." About 300,000 users are said to have taken the psychological test; the app also gathered information about those users' friends, creating a dataset of roughly 87 million profiles. Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, obtained data belonging to millions of Facebook users without their consent to build psychographic profiles.
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End the scrambleMeta's actions in 2015–2018 and related corporate penalties
Meta banned the quiz app in 2015 for violating its platform policy and sent a legal request to Cambridge Analytica to delete the collected data. Cambridge Analytica announced in May 2018 that it was immediately ceasing operations. Over subsequent years Meta faced multiple legal and regulatory consequences tied to the episode: an affirmed $5 billion fine from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for undermining users' ability to control their privacy on Facebook, and a December 2022 $725 million settlement to resolve a class‑action lawsuit alleging improper sharing of user information with Cambridge Analytica.
Parallel state settlement and New Mexico's stance
In August, Meta reached a settlement with nearly all U.S. states and territories — with New Mexico and Florida explicitly excepted — agreeing to pay $18 billion over the next decade and to implement stronger child‑safety measures on Facebook and Instagram. That package included $459 million earmarked for claims related to the Cambridge Analytica matter. New Mexico, however, proceeded with separate litigation that led to the $25 billion award now imposed by Judge Mathew.
Meta's reaction and the likely next step: appeal
Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney criticized the penalty and said the company intends to appeal the decision. The company has already resolved related claims in other venues through settlements and regulatory fines, but the New Mexico judgment represents a substantially larger single penalty tied to state unfair‑practices findings in the Cambridge Analytica aftermath.
What this means for affected users, New Mexico and other states, and Meta's legal team
- End users whose data was collected: The ruling underscores that courts may find companies made actionable promises about user control over data; those affected by the Cambridge Analytica collection are central to the finding that led to the penalty.
- New Mexico and other states that negotiated the August settlement: New Mexico's separate course produced a dramatically different financial outcome than the multistate agreement that excluded the state; other states may watch closely as the appeal proceeds to understand how state unfair‑practices laws are being applied.
- Meta's legal and corporate leadership: With an appeal announced by C.J. Mahoney, the company's legal strategy will now move to higher courts — and the decision highlights how past platform decisions (banning the app in 2015, requesting deletion) factored into litigation years later.
The $25 billion judgment frames the Cambridge Analytica episode not only as an event in digital history but as a live legal and financial liability that remains unsettled. With Meta set to appeal and a separate multistate settlement already in place, the ruling leaves a clear, immediate question: whether an appellate court will uphold Judge Mathew's finding of 43 million violations and the scale of the penalty he imposed.
