A recent court ruling in New Mexico imposed an additional $567 million fine on Meta, bringing the total fine to $942 million for failures to protect children on its platforms. This sanction represents the largest penalty ever imposed on the company over child safety concerns, with one judge classifying the social media giant as a “public nuisance.”
The measure orders the company, owner of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, to allocate the amount to a fund aimed at mitigating future damages, establishing an important precedent in holding technology companies accountable.
Understanding the historic decision and the concept of “public nuisance”
Judge Bryan Biedscheid, responsible for the sentence, compared Meta’s platforms to a factory, where the product is advertising and content, but the “pollution” generated is the “psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children that must be combatted”. This analogy highlights the seriousness of the social impacts resulting from the operation of social networks.
The New Mexico lawsuit, filed in 2023 by state prosecutors, alleged that Meta should be held accountable for the way its platforms exposed children to sexually explicit materials and contact with predators. In the initial phase of the trial, the company was found guilty of violating the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, with its recommendation algorithms directing young users to harmful content and contacts.
Biedscheid’s decision in the second phase of the process elevated Meta’s actions to the status of “public nuisance”, a health and safety issue that negatively affects the general public. It is the first time that a social media company has been categorized in this way, with the judge emphasizing that the harmful effects of the platforms are not limited to the digital environment, but spread “to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most worryingly, to the real world”.
Meta’s reaction and the company’s legal scenario
A Meta spokesperson stated that the company “disagrees with the decision and will appeal”, reiterating its commitment to keeping people safe on platforms and transparency about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. The company expressed confidence in its track record of protecting teens online and promised to continue defending itself against allegations that it says misrepresent the facts.
The $567 million penalty comes on top of a previous $375 million fine in the same case, resulting in a total of $942 million. The amount represents the largest sanction ever imposed on Meta for child safety reasons. The company is currently facing thousands of lawsuits across the United States over similar issues, including a significant ruling in Los Angeles earlier this year that found it responsible for creating addictive platforms.
Bruce Daisley, former European vice-president of Twitter (currently
Concrete measures imposed to protect young users
The US$567 million fund that Meta was ordered to create will be used to mitigate the impacts of damage caused by the platforms. The majority of the amount, around US$420 million, will be used to address existing losses, through funding for “clinical or other appropriate behavioral health programs and professionals.”
Another portion of the money will be directed to awareness and prevention training, training teachers and health professionals to deal with the harm caused by social media to children. In addition to the creation of the fund, judge Bryan Biedscheid imposed several other mandatory measures on Meta to protect users under 18:
- Ensure that no user account under the age of 18 is recommended to an adult.
- Prevent any adult from sending messages to underage users.
- Prohibit underage users from sending or receiving nudity content.
- Implement a “one chance” policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation.
- Eliminate “like” counts for users under 18.
- Ban push notifications for minors daily between 10pm and 7am, and during the typical school year between 8am and 3pm, except weekends.
- Implement a mandatory usage limit of 90 cumulative hours per month on Instagram and Facebook for users under the age of 18, which equates to approximately three hours per day.
Global impact and the future of social media regulation
New Mexico’s decision is seen as indicative of a global trend toward stricter regulation of social media. Bruce Daisley stated that “it is an indication that we are moving towards a stage where social media will be addressed across the world”, signaling that the impact of the fine could be more significant in terms of legal and reputational precedent than financial for Meta.
In the United Kingdom and the European Union, authorities are also seeking similar measures to protect children online, focusing efforts on improving the mechanisms that allow minors to be seen or contacted on the internet. Several countries are moving forward with plans to completely ban children from social media. The United Kingdom, for example, has proposed blocking access for under-16s and imposing “curves” to prevent nighttime use by older teenagers.
The legal scenario for Meta remains intense, with an important trial against the company scheduled to begin next week in California. Nearly three dozen U.S. state attorneys general are suing the company for violating children’s privacy laws, highlighting ongoing, multifaceted pressure on the company to overhaul its security and content moderation practices.
