Meta just took a major hit in New Mexico, where a jury has ordered the company to pay $375 million over claims it misled families about how safe its platforms are for kids. After a six-week trial, jurors found Meta violated the state's consumer protection law by presenting Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp as safe for children and teens while failing to protect them from sexual exploitation, Reuters reports. Prosecutors accused the company of putting profits over safety, reports the AP. The case, brought by Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez, is the first jury verdict of its kind against the company and lands as Meta faces a broader backlash over youth mental health and social media.
Torrez's office said the lawsuit grew out of a 2023 undercover operation in which investigators set up accounts posing as users under 14. Those accounts were quickly sent explicit material and contacted by adults seeking sexual content, leading to criminal charges against multiple people, according to the state. New Mexico argued that Meta knew from internal documents that its platforms exposed minors to sexual exploitation and mental health harms, yet resisted basic measures such as effective age verification while promoting features like infinite scroll and auto-play that it said encourage addictive use.
- "I think the jury has seen a lot of what we have known for the last couple of years, and that's just a treasure trove of evidence that Meta has known about the danger of their products, the danger of their platforms and the way in which they've built something that is truly harmful for kids," Torrez told CNN on Monday before closing arguments.
- Meta denied wrongdoing, saying it has "tireless" efforts and "robust disclosures" about harmful content and cannot stop everything users post. The company has argued that both this case and thousands of similar suits over alleged addictive design are barred by the First Amendment and Section 230, which shields platforms from many claims tied to user content.
- During the trial, the court looked at Meta's internal correspondence and heard testimony from psychiatric experts, Meta execs, platform engineers, and whistleblowers who left the company, among others, the AP reports.
- The $375 million covers thousands of individual violations. The jury award fell well short of the more than $2 billion the state's lawyers called for but it may not be Meta's last problem in New Mexico: in a second phase of the trial expected to start in May, the same judge will hear arguments that the company created a public nuisance and could order changes to how its apps operate in the state.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
