A judge in Washington state fined Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the parent company of Facebook, $24.7 million for violating campaign finance disclosure law.
King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North on Wednesday issued the maximum penalty allowed for more than 800 violations of the state’s 1972 Fair Campaign Practices Act.
The law requires TV stations, newspapers, and platforms such as Facebook to publish the names and addresses of people who purchase political ads, who the ads are targeting, how the ads were funded, and the number of views for each ad.
Zuckerberg's company argued the law was unconstitutional because it placed an undue burden on political speech and is "virtually impossible to fully comply with."
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said Facebook "intentionally disregarded" the state's election transparency laws.
Meta was fined $30,000 for each of its 822 violations, which Ferguson said is the largest campaign finance-related fine ever given in the United States.
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