New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $567 million

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from Facebook and Instagram, marking what the BBC reported appears to be the largest child safety ruling against the social media company.

The late Thursday order by Judge Bryan Biedscheid comes in the second phase of a landmark case brought by New Mexico against Meta over child safety. It is in addition to $375 million in civil penalties jurors previously ordered in the first phase, bringing the total judgment to $942 million.

Biedscheid said Meta’s platforms amounted to a “public nuisance,” comparing the company to a factory and describing advertising and content as its product. He wrote that “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children” were “the pollution that must be abated.”

“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,” the judge wrote, according to the BBC.

The money will be placed in a fund aimed at reducing future harm. Biedscheid ordered that $420 million go toward treatment services for young people. The rest will fund awareness and prevention efforts, screening services and other costs over the next five years.

“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” Meta said in a statement issued by a spokesperson late Thursday.

“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,” the company said.

The case began with a 2023 lawsuit filed by attorneys for the State of New Mexico. The state argued Meta should be held liable for the way its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators. In the first phase of the trial, jurors found that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. The BBC reported that Meta was found to have repeatedly violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, with recommendation algorithms that effectively “steered” young users toward harmful content and contacts.

In the second phase, prosecutors had sought fundamental changes at Meta, including limits on addictive features, better age verification and measures to prevent child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.

The judge’s order could change how Facebook and Instagram appear to users in New Mexico. Meta must build banners and informational screens that clearly explain protection features, best practices and tools to address inappropriate comments, and display them regularly. Those changes, along with an educational campaign in New Mexico, will be subject to state review.

The court said federal children’s privacy law prevents Meta from applying certain age-verification tools to children under 13. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act means the court cannot order Meta to request personal data from children or passively track them online, even for age verification purposes. 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.

Instead, Meta must continue improving its age assurance tools in New Mexico, including artificial intelligence systems that estimate age based on signals such as users’ friends and the content they post and consume. The company must also try to develop a dedicated model to predict users under age 13 within two years.

Meta must request proof of age from Instagram and Facebook users in New Mexico it estimates to be under 13. If the company determines a user is under 13, or under 18 without being able to estimate a specific age, it must treat that user as under 13 or under 18 until the user verifies their age. Meta also must partner with schools or a child safety organization to create a reporting portal for school staff to flag possible under-13 users, delete personal information it has collected on users under 13, and report twice a year on its compliance with the court’s order.