Meta faces a $567 million child safety penalty in New Mexico after a state judge ruled the company failed to warn the public about dangers on its platforms. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the social media giant had become a public nuisance and ordered the money into a fund meant to reduce future harm to children.
The ruling adds to a separate $375 million penalty already imposed in the case, bringing Meta’s total liability there to $942 million. In his decision, Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory whose products create pollution, saying the company’s advertising and content were the product and that the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children amounted to pollution that had to be cleaned up. He said the effects did not stay on the platforms themselves but spread across the internet and into the real world, placing burdens on children, families, schools, hospitals and law enforcement.
Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, said it disagreed with the ruling and would appeal. A company spokesman said Meta works to keep people safe online, has been open about the difficulty of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content, and remains confident in its record of protecting teenagers. The company made a similar response after the earlier $375 million verdict, when it also said it planned to appeal.
The case began with a 2023 lawsuit filed by New Mexico state attorneys. They argued that Meta should be held responsible for the way its platforms exposed children to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators. In the first phase of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act because its recommendation algorithms effectively steered young users toward harmful content and contacts. Those algorithms are the systems Meta uses to automatically choose what people see on its platforms.
Biedscheid’s second-phase ruling went beyond money and ordered a set of changes aimed at reducing the risk to minors. Under the order, no account belonging to a user under 18 may be recommended to an adult, and no adult may message an underage user. The judge also imposed a one-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation, barred push notifications during late-night hours and during school hours on weekdays, and set a monthly usage limit of 90 cumulative hours across Instagram and Facebook for such users.
