A United States judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million for failing to warn the public about dangers its platforms posed to children, marking the largest ruling against the social media giant over child safety issues.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the company is a “public nuisance” akin to air pollution and must put the money in a fund aimed at reducing future harms. The ruling adds to $375 million in fines Meta was already ordered to pay in the case, bringing the total to $942 million.
In his ruling, Judge Biedscheid compared Meta 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.” He noted that the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms “do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world.”
The case stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought by New Mexico, which argued Meta should be held liable for endangering children and exposing them to sexually explicit material and contact with predators. In the first phase of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act as its recommendation algorithms “steered” young users toward harmful content.
In the second phase, the judge found that Meta’s harms reached the level of “public nuisance” — an issue of health and safety so widespread it negatively impacts the general public. This appears to be the first time a social media company has been deemed a public nuisance.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez welcomed the decision, calling it “a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online.”
The bulk of the penalty, $420 million, will go toward treatment of harms Meta’s platforms have already caused, funding clinical and behavioural health programmes. The remaining money will support awareness campaigns, prevention initiatives and training for teachers and health professionals.
The judge also ordered Meta to implement strict safeguards:
– Ensure no account of a user under 18 is recommended to adults and no adult can message underage users
– Ban the sending or receiving of nudity by underage users
– Enforce a “1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation”
– Eliminate “like” counts for users under 18
– Ban push notifications for such users between 10 PM and 7 AM, and during school hours of 8 AM to 3 PM
– Implement a mandatory usage limit of 90 hours per month across Instagram and Facebook, about three hours daily
Meta said it will appeal the ruling. A company spokesperson stated: “We disagree with the ruling and will 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. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”
The company faces thousands of similar lawsuits in the US over child safety issues. Next week, another major trial begins in California, where nearly three dozen US states’ attorneys general are suing Meta for violating child privacy laws.
