A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million over harms to children linked to its platforms, raising the total financial penalties in the state’s child safety case to $942 million.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid ruled that Meta’s conduct amounted to a public nuisance, finding that the effects on children extended beyond its platforms and created a wider burden for families, schools, hospitals and law enforcement. The company owns Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads.
The latest order follows an earlier $375 million penalty in the same case. New Mexico sued Meta in 2023, alleging that the company’s platforms endangered children by exposing them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.
During the first stage of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly breached New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. The case focused in part on recommendation systems that, according to the ruling, directed young users towards harmful content and contacts.
Fund and platform measures ordered
Judge Biedscheid directed Meta to establish a fund to help mitigate the harms identified in the case. Of the new award, $420 million is to support clinical and behavioural health programmes and professionals for children affected by the platforms. Other funding is intended for awareness and prevention training for teachers and health professionals.
The judge also ordered Meta to introduce several changes, including preventing accounts belonging to users under 18 from being recommended to adults and stopping adults from messaging underage users. The company was directed to prohibit underage users from sending or receiving nudity and to apply a one-strike policy to adult users involved in child sexual exploitation.
Additional measures include removing like counts for users under 18, restricting push notifications overnight and during typical school hours, and setting a compulsory limit of 90 cumulative hours a month across Instagram and Facebook for those users.
Meta said it disagreed with the decision and would appeal. A company spokesman said Meta worked to keep users safe, had been open about the challenges of detecting harmful content and bad actors, and remained confident in its record of protecting teenagers online.
Meta is facing thousands of similar US lawsuits. It also lost a case in Los Angeles earlier this year involving comparable allegations, while a separate California trial involving nearly three dozen state attorneys general is due to begin next week.
Source: BBC News
