For decades, tech giants grew at breakneck speeds as Congress struggled to keep pace with the consequences of the companies’ rapidly booming businesses.

But a new de facto regulatory regime has emerged over the past year as courts clobber the biggest internet companies. And for the first time, their product designs and advertising models — which critics say treat users as products — are costing the companies serious money.

The latest blow came Wednesday, when a New Mexico judge ordered Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay a record $25 billion penalty for abusing consumer privacy. In a 20-page ruling, the judge scolded the company for deceiving consumers and allowing their data to be harvested by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

“Facebook’s misrepresentations about users’ control of their data were not isolated incidents, but rather a systematic pattern of deception at the core of Facebook’s business model,” wrote Judge Francis J.…