The Biggest Meta Settlements Of All Time

Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms or simply Meta, is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Meta's $1.8 trillion dollar market cap keeps it nipping at the heels of companies as massively valuable as Amazon, Google's Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft, as well as companies making major money movies like Nvidia. Meta has faced serious big-ticket lawsuits over the years, and has made some massive settlements for its alleged crimes.

The big tech giant's platforms have grown to contain a user base of more than 3 billion people, and it controls Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta has paid (or will pay) for its involvement in a variety of crimes, including breaking digital competition laws, violating biometric privacy laws, and issues with collecting the data of children under 13. Meta has also come under fire for what some called censorship after removing President Donald Trump from some of its platforms.

But you know what they say: Don't do the crime unless you can pay the fine. Meta has paid settlements to the tune of millions and billions of dollars since its first $5 billion government penalty fine in 2019. Meta could also owe billions more for violating private data on Flo, a fertility tracking app. While Meta hasn't necessarily admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, it is in the tremendously advantageous financial position to pay any of its misdeeds away. Even so, the public's awareness of any alleged wrongdoing isn't so easily paid away.

In 2025, Meta paid a settlement of $25 million to President Donald Trump. This came after the lawsuit Trump filed in 2021 in response to his suspension from Facebook and Instagram following the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. Facebook cited that Trump had broken rules surrounding using the platforms to stoke violence. Trump claimed his First Amendment rights to free expression had been censored with the suspension. Though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was once critical of Trump, he has since become friendly with the president and Meta even donated $1 million to his second inaugural campaign.

In 2020, Meta settled a class-action lawsuit for violating facial recognition privacy laws in Illinois. The lawsuit found that Meta used Facebook's facial recognition technology inappropriately, and stored facial biometric data without consent, therefore violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The settlement was for $650 million, and came after five years of hard legal fighting.

Meta also began making its largest privacy class action settlement payments in 2025 for a 2022 lawsuit regarding Facebook illegally allowing third parties like Cambridge Analytica to view its user data. This is a $725 million dollar settlement, made in payments of around $34 or so to millions of members. If it seems stunning that a company can even survive after paying out like this, your jaw may hit the floor when you see some of the larger settlements it's paid.

In 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commission levied a $1.3 billion fine against Meta for unlawfully transferring European user data to the U.S. This massive fine came shortly after settlements paid by Meta to other Irish regulators for other data breaches and privacy violations. In 2022, Meta also agreed to pay around €405 million — roughly $425 million — for violating children's privacy protections in Ireland. Even so, its stock still went up in 2023.

That same year, the State of Texas sued Meta for using Facebook's facial recognition technology to essentially store and steal facial biometric data without consent. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged the facial shape detail taken from uploaded photographs chalked up to "tens of millions of violations" in a 2022 tweet. Ultimately, the suit cost Meta $1.4 billion in settlement payments, which started to pay out over their five-year course in 2024.

Even more recently, Meta's own shareholders won an $8 billion settlement after suing the company for the costs incurred by its repeated privacy violations. The settlement was reached in July 2025, cutting the case short before many parties expected to testify took the stand. Details about the settlement have not been discussed, and many key players on the defendant's side are keeping their mouths shut tighter than an Instagram profile on Private. Of course, Meta's not the only major tech company currently under fire: Amazon is also due to pay out a $2.5 billion settlement to eligible customers.