A New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay its largest fine ever for lying to the public about how it handled user data.
Meta has received a $25bn fine from a New Mexico judge in the US over its handling of user data.
The Facebook-owner was taken to court over allegations regarding its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which came to light in 2018. The scandal refers to the discovery that millions of Facebook users’ data was collected and used in political ad targeting without informed consent at global level.
Judge Francis Mathew said: “The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” adding it went to “the heart of Facebook’s core business practices”.
The New Mexico jury found the tech giant misled consumers in relation to allegations the political consulting firm supporting Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign used data obtained from millions of Facebook users without consent.
Meta’s head lawyer CJ Mahoney said the ruling made it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico”. The company intends to appeal, a move Mahoney predicts will be successful.
The fine is the largest Meta has received, and comes just a few months after a historic settlement in which the firm agreed to pay $16bn in the social media addiction case.
Meta did not immediately respond to Affiliate Leaders’ request for comment.
Introducing automatic consent
The fine comes just as Meta’s new commercial policy is set to come into effect. Under the updated terms, any user with a business account will automatically have to consent to Meta scraping their websites if they continue to use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
From 30 October, 2026, any websites “associated with” business accounts on Meta platforms will be trawled by its web scraping tools. This includes news publications with accounts on Meta platforms, Neiman Lab reported.
News organisations frequently use platforms like Facebook to push stories, run ads, promote affiliate deals and engage with readers. According to Neiman Lab, the upcoming changes could be a sign Meta is scraping news sites to train its AI products.
There is no option to opt-out for publishers, aside from ceasing to use the platform’s altogether.
The move has a potential to create a divide among publishers who will have to evaluate the trade off of Meta platforms’ reach and the value of their intellectual property.
This comes as Google has been pushed to offer fairer licensing to publishers by the UK’s competition watchdog. The tech giant has now partnered with 400 publications globally on news AI pilot programme.
