{"id":704,"date":"2026-10-21T20:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=704"},"modified":"2026-10-21T20:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:02:22","slug":"new-mexico-judge-fines-meta-25-billion-user-data-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=704","title":{"rendered":"META JUST GOT HIT WITH A $25 BILLION FINE! | A New Mexico judge says Facebook spent 11 years lying about your data, and the bill is about one quarter\u2019s profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE BIGGEST ONE YET! A judge in <strong>New Mexico<\/strong> on Wednesday ordered <strong>Meta<\/strong>, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay <strong>$25 billion<\/strong>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cqdr8zxrr3dxo\">BBC<\/a> reported. It is the largest fine ever levied against the company for its business practices.<\/p>\n<p>It follows a two-week trial earlier this year that found Meta spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data. The case grew out of the <strong>Cambridge Analytica<\/strong> scandal. The state also accused Meta of misleading people about how it profited from hate speech and how it enforced its own rules, and the jury agreed on those claims too. Jurors found Meta broke state law <strong>more than 40 million times<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Judge <strong>Francis Mathew<\/strong> called the violations \u201cwillful\u201d and said they spanned \u201cmore than 11 years,\u201d from 2010 to 2021. He wrote that communications between senior executives, including <strong>Mark Zuckerberg<\/strong>, were \u201cdesigned to mislead the public.\u201d \u201cThe lies extend beyond Facebook\u2019s data practices as well,\u201d he said, going to \u201cthe heart of Facebook\u2019s core business practices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Get this: the full penalty was calculated at <strong>$219 billion<\/strong>. The judge cut it to $25 billion, roughly what Meta earns in profit each quarter. The state had asked for up to $40 billion. Meta argued anything over $3.4 billion would be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Meta\u2019s top lawyer <strong>CJ Mahoney<\/strong> said the ruling makes it \u201call but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,\u201d called the suit \u201ca tax on speech,\u201d and said Meta will appeal and win. Attorney General <strong>Ra\u00fal Torrez<\/strong> fired back: \u201cNo corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.\u201d For scale, the FTC\u2019s 2019 privacy fine was $5 billion. This one is five times that.<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cqdr8zxrr3dxo\">BBC News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A New Mexico judge says Facebook spent 11 years lying about your data, and the bill is about one quarter\u2019s profit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-meta-25bn-fine-1021.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}