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In another major blow to Meta, a New Mexico judge ordered the social media giant to 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.
Meta and Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, saw their stock price drop this week after a jury found the companies liable for the design and operations of their platforms, harming a young user.
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 with a factory and child sexual exploitation and harm with pollution.
From courtrooms to strip clubs, backlash is building against Meta’s latest smart glasses as a disturbing social media trend takes hold.
“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 artificial intelligence 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 affect Meta’s algorithm would probably violate the 1st Amendment and Section 230, which protects platforms for being legally liable for content posted by its users.
The lawsuit alleges that Snap, the parent company of disappearing messaging app Snapchat, failed to disable and warn its users about “dangerous” features used by predators.