Trouble mounts for Meta: New Mexico court fines social media giant $567 million, implement youth safety measures

Hours after a New Mexico court ordered Facebook and Instagram's parent company, Meta, to pay $567 million in the second phase of a landmark trial that the social media giant lost in March, the US tech giant said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal.

What did the New Mexico court rule?

In a ruling late Thursday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid found that the company had created a public nuisance in New Mexico in response to a lawsuit brought by Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez. The state alleged that the company intentionally designed its platforms to addict young users while failing to protect children from sexual exploitation, Reuters reported.

Biedscheid noted that the social media giant is a "public nuisance" similar to air pollution, later comparing it to a factory with advertising and content as its product and "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated," BBC reported.

The judge wrote, "Just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta's platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement."

Additionally, the ruling requires Meta to implement a series of youth safety measures that will remain in effect for five years. The measures include monthly limits on teenagers' use of Facebook and Instagram, restrictions on notifications, tighter controls on contact between adults and minors, safeguards for artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, and enhanced review of reports involving child sexual abuse.

The court ruled that federal child privacy laws bar the tech giant from using age-verification tools for children under 13 and noted that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) prevents Meta from requiring children to share personal information or allowing them to be passively tracked online, even for the purpose of verifying their age.

The court also said requiring only Meta, and not other social media companies, to verify children's ages would be "inequitable and unduly injurious" to the company.

He also said that most of the money, $420 million, will be used for treatment services for young people, while the remaining amount will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services, and other costs over the next five years, AP reported.

Case against Meta in New Mexico

The case against Meta originated from a lawsuit filed by New Mexico in 2023, alleging that the company should be held accountable for exposing children to sexually explicit content and online predators through its platforms.

The ruling came in the second phase of New Mexico's lawsuit. Earlier, during the first phase of the trial, jurors imposed $375 million in civil penalties on the tech giant after concluding that it had knowingly harmed children's mental health and withheld information about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Combined with the latest ruling, Meta's total liability in the case now stands at $942 million.

In the second phase, prosecutors urged the judge to require Meta to make significant changes to its platforms, including limiting addictive features, improving age verification, and enhancing protections against child sexual exploitation through stricter default privacy settings and increased oversight.

Meta's response to the court's ruling

The company said it will appeal the ruling and has been working to identify and remove harmful content from its platforms. In a statement, it said, "We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."

Meta faces scores of lawsuits

The social media giant is facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over similar issues. In addition to the New Mexico ruling, the company earlier this year lost a case in Los Angeles involving similar claims.

Next week, another trial against the company will begin in California after roughly three dozen US states' attorneys general sued the company for violating child privacy laws.

(with agency inputs)