The bill for Cambridge Analytica has arrived, nearly a decade later.

New Mexico's Attorney General had sued Meta in 2021, arguing that Facebook:

Misled users about how their personal information was collected, shared, and protected.

  • Misrepresented the level of control users had over their data.
  • Made deceptive statements about its efforts to address misinformation and hate speech.
  • Failed to follow through on promises it made after the Cambridge Analytica revelations, including investigations into third-party apps.

 

A Santa Fe jury found Meta violated New Mexico’s consumer-protection laws more than 43 million times, based on company and executive statements about hate speech and user data. 

The jury concluded that many statements Facebook made about data privacy, data sharing, misinformation, and hate speech were misleading to consumers.

 

The penalties calculated came to $219.5 billion, which the judge cut to $25 billion, using the law’s $5,000-per-violation maximum. New Mexico’s population-based share of the $17.1 billion multistate settlement would have been about $349 million.

Meta’s chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said the company expects to win on appeal. For scale, Meta reported Q3 2026 revenue of $64.6 billion and net income of $9.9 billion.