Meta has been ordered to pay $25 billion (£18.6 billion) to New Mexico after a judge ruled on Wednesday that the company had misled consumers about Facebook user data and privacy, following a jury verdict finding millions of violations of state consumer protection laws.

Judge Francis Mathew reduced the penalty from more than $219 billion calculated under state law, handing Meta one of the largest financial penalties imposed on a US corporation. The company has said it intends to appeal the ruling, which stems from a lawsuit filed by New Mexico in 2021.

Jurors found on 25 September that 26 of 29 statements made by Meta and its leadership about data privacy, hate speech and other platform policies were misleading. They calculated that the company had committed more than 43 million violations, based on the potential audience for the statements.

The case followed revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party application.

New Mexico alleged that Meta misled users about who could access their personal information and how the company handled hate speech and misinformation. The state argued that Meta knew third parties had broad access to user data and tolerated harmful content when it benefited its business.

In his ruling, Mathew said the company's conduct went to the heart of its core business practices. He found that the violations warranted a penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law, but reduced the amount to $25 billion.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez welcomed the decision, saying: "For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law." He added that the judgment demonstrated that no corporation was too powerful to be held accountable.

Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said the company was confident it would prevail on appeal. He argued that the ruling made it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico" and characterised the lawsuit as an attempt to impose a tax on online speech.

The penalty adds to Meta's mounting legal liabilities over privacy and user safety. The company previously paid a $5 billion penalty to the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, while New Mexico secured a further $942 million in earlier proceedings concerning alleged failures to protect young users and misleading safety claims.

The latest ruling comes as Meta continues to face lawsuits over the impact of its platforms on children and teenagers, with another trial scheduled to begin the following week.

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