Divide $25bn by the roughly two million people who live in New Mexico, and the penalty works out at about $12,500 per resident. That arithmetic captures the extraordinary scale of the order handed down on Wednesday, when a state judge fined Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the largest sum ever imposed on the company. The ruling followed a two-week trial earlier this year. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political consultancy used data from millions of Facebook users, including in work linked to the 2016 US presidential election.

State lawyers argued that Meta executives had repeatedly claimed that user data was never shared with outside parties without permission, when in practice it had been. A jury found that the company violated state law more than 40 million times, and also concluded that it had intentionally misled the public about how it profited from hateful content and how its rules against it were enforced. The judge added that the deception reached the heart of Facebook's core business. The numbers on each side show how far apart the parties were.

New Mexico had asked for up to $40bn, while Meta argued that anything above $3.4bn would be excessive. The judge landed much closer to the state's figure. The company's chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said the decision made it all but impossible to do business in New Mexico, described the case as an attempt to tax speech, and promised an appeal that he predicted would succeed.

The fine follows an $18bn deal with California over child safety, so the legal bill for 2025's disputes is climbing quickly.