The penalty, one of the largest levied against the tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

The spending has hurt the Silicon Valley giant’s cash flow, which turned negative. Meta said it would issue a new class of stock to help it raise more money.

New Mexico's Attorney General called it "an unambiguous message to Silicon Valley."

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has come back to haunt Meta after a New Mexico judge ordered it to pay $25 billion in penalties for more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law. The ruling marks the biggest legal hit Meta has taken this year, even as it's faced several other losses or settlements.

A New Mexico jury ruled in September that Meta misled consumers over how it protected their data and prevented misinformation and hate speech on its platforms. The case stemmed from a 2021 complaint in the wake of the revelations a few years earlier that UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millio …

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A Times reporter and editors discuss the challenges of sifting through what’s real and what’s not in pursuit of the news.

Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing ‘high-risk’ material on the video-sharing platform TikTok

A 14-year-old schoolgirl’s death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on “toxic” social media feeds.

Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok “may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life”.

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© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word “train” from its “streamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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Joel Kaplan, a former adviser to George W. Bush known for his Republican ties, had helped Meta build its relationship with the Trump administration.