Meta fined $25 billion in New Mexico over Cambridge Analytica scandal

A New Mexico judge ruled Wednesday that Meta must pay $25 billion to the state after a jury found last month that the social media giant had deceived users in a case related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to media reports. 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. Meta slammed the case as "a tax on speech." "This ruling... makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico," Meta said in a statement. "We are confident we will prevail on appeal." 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. Read moreFake AI images of protester go viral after woman punched at Trump's Ohio rally 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 ...