The FTC's $5 billion fine against Facebook was the largest privacy penalty in American history.
New Mexico just hit Facebook with a $25 billion fine for something that happened to zero people.
This verdict is the blueprint every Democrat attorney general in America has been waiting for.
Zuckerberg's Facebook Racked Up 44 Million Violations and Harmed Zero People
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez went to trial alone on this one.
Forty-eight other states settled with Meta and went home.
Torrez stayed.
His lawsuit accused Meta of making 26 specific public statements – Zuckerberg and Sandberg on earnings calls, in interviews, in newsroom posts – promising users that Facebook protected their data and policed speech it deemed hateful or false.
Things like: your data is safe, we remove posts that break our rules, we do not profit from hate.
Torrez argued every single one was a lie told to the people of New Mexico.
On September 25, a Santa Fe jury agreed – and found that Meta committed 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act.
Judge Francis Mathew signed the $25 billion order on October 21 – the largest commercial judgment in American history, according to the state's own outside counsel.
Not one New Mexican had to have seen those statements, relied on them, or been harmed by them in any way.
The $25 billion is built on a formula: 26 statements multiplied by either the 2.1 million residents of New Mexico or the 1.4 million Facebook users in the state – whichever produced the larger violation count for that particular statement.
Meta's lawyer confirmed the state presented zero evidence that any New Mexican ever saw, relied on, or was harmed by a single one of those 26 statements.
A state representative testified at trial that New Mexico received zero complaints about them.
Zero complaints, zero proven victims, $25 billion – with 15% annual interest attached.
The judge could have gone higher.
Under New Mexico law, the maximum was $219 billion, and the injunction question remains open.
How Zuckerberg's 2020 Earnings Call Became a Consumer Fraud Count
The FTC already settled the Cambridge Analytica privacy lies for $5 billion in 2019.
The dangerous counts in this verdict are the ones about speech – five for what they called "hate speech," two for posts they labeled "misinformation," and three for unequal enforcement of Facebook's own rules.
The jury found Zuckerberg committed consumer fraud when he said during a July 2020 earnings call that Facebook does not profit from hate or "misinformation" and does not want that speech on its platform.
The verdict says that was a lie – that Facebook was leaving up the same posts it had publicly promised to remove.
A New Mexico court just decided that leaving up speech the government dislikes is consumer fraud worth $25 billion.
Meta's chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney called it an attempt to impose a tax on speech and set new rules for what people can say online.
The Free Speech Legal Theory That Has Every Platform in Its Crosshairs
Democrat AGs in California and New York have been trying to regulate online speech for years and keep losing in court.
California's AB 587, which required platforms to report on their "hate speech" moderation, was partially blocked by the Ninth Circuit on First Amendment grounds.
New York's Stop Hiding Hate Act – demanding platforms disclose how they police speech Democrats dislike – drew an immediate federal lawsuit from X Corp.
New Mexico just found the workaround: instead of regulating speech directly, sue platforms for consumer fraud every time their speech rules don't match their public promises – no individual harm required.
The jury was instructed that the First Amendment does not protect false commercial statements.
Every social media company in America has made public promises about removing speech they deem hateful or false.
Every single one of them has posts up right now that Democrats would label hate speech.
That is the playbook.
Meta will appeal, and on the excessive fines clause it has a strong case – $25 billion with zero proven victims is a constitutional problem no matter who the defendant is.
But the legal theory outlasts the appeal, and the next Democrat AG who picks it up does not have to prove harm either.
All they need is an executive who once promised to police "hate speech" and a post still live on the platform.
That is every platform, every state, every day, forever.
Sources:
- State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms, Inc., D-101-CV-202100132, Order Signed October 21, 2026.
- Dan Frieth, "Meta Fined $25 Billion Over 'Hate Speech' and Privacy Claims," Reclaim The Net, October 22, 2026.
- Staff, "New Mexico Wants Judge To Fine Meta At Least $35 Billion," MediaPost, October 2026.
- Staff, "Meta Blasts New Mexico Request For $40 Billion Fine," MediaPost, October 2026.
