Representational file photo.
San Francisco: A New Mexico judge ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25 billion on Wednesday after a jury found that the social media giant had deceived consumers in a case linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The penalty comes a couple of months after Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle claims brought by 48 other states, including allegations tied to Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm found to have improperly harvested personal data from millions of Facebook users for targeted political advertising, notably during the 2016 US presidential election.
Revelations at the time showed that the firm had obtained data gathered through a personality quiz app called "thisisyourdigitallife," which was installed by about 270,000 users but also collected information on their friends.
In total, the app reached roughly 87 million Facebook users worldwide.
Facebook learned in December 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had acquired the data but did not disclose it publicly until 2018, after a whistleblower came forward, sparking a major political scandal.
Jurors in the New Mexico trial found that the misconduct affected all of the state's more than 2.1 million residents.
"We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement in September.
Meta and the New Mexico Attorney General's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
