Meta ordered by New Mexico judge to pay $567 million in landmark child safety case

In another major blow to Meta, a New Mexico judge ordered the social media giant pay $567 million and take actions to make its platform safer for young people.

The latest penalty is in addition to the $375 million that a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay after finding that the company violated state consumer protection laws for enabling the mental health harms and sexual exploitation of adolescents.

The case stems from a lawsuit that New Mexico Atty. Gen. Raúl Torrez filed against Meta in 2023. The lawsuit accused the California social media company of failing to remove child sexual abuse material and prioritizing engagement and ad revenue over safety.

The ruling adds to the growing scrutiny Meta and other platforms are facing over how social media affects the mental health and safety of young people. In March, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta-owned Instagram and Google-owned YouTube were negligent for designing addictive features that harmed the mental health of a California woman. Another youth safety case involving Meta is also headed to trial this month in California.

In the New Mexico case, the First Judicial Court in Santa Fe determined that Meta’s conduct created a “public nuisance” and ordered the company to create a fund to remedy harms.

“Meta’s platforms create a public nuisance because their purpose and effect is to optimize engagement, including in ways that are detrimental to teenagers’ health and safety,” Judge Bryan Biedscheid wrote in the more than 60-page ruling on Thursday.

The court compared Meta to a factory and child sexual exploitation and harm to pollution.

“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,” Biedscheid wrote.

The judge outlined steps that Meta must take to mitigate harms including preventing New Mexico minors from engaging in romantic or sexualized interactions with its AI chatbots, eliminating push notifications during certain hours and building a banner screen with resources that’s displayed at least once a week for minors.

The court, though, did acknowledge that social media also has benefits and didn’t go as far as ordering Meta to change its algorithm and recommendations because it affects content on the platform. Measures that would impact Meta’s algorithm would likely violate the 1st Amendment and Section 230, which protects platforms for being legally liable for content posted by its users.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said it disagreed with the ruling and would appeal.

“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,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

Torrez, the New Mexico attorney general, said in a statement Meta knew for years that its platforms were harming kids and now it’s paying for choosing “engagement and profit over their safety.”

“This is not just a judgment against one company. It is a blueprint,” Torrez said. “For the first time, a court has ruled that a social media giant can be held liable for building products that endanger children and has ordered the structural changes needed to fix it. New Mexico led the way in the courtroom. Now other states, and other countries confronting the same crisis, have a roadmap they can follow.”