A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March.
In a late Thursday ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years.
In the first phase, jurors had ordered $375 million in civil penalties against Meta, determining that it knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
In the second phase, prosecutors had asked the judge to impose fundamental changes at Meta aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.
The decision means the look of Meta’s platforms could change. The judge ordered Facebook and Instagram to build banner and informational screens to clearly explain its protection features, best practices, tools to address inappropriate comments, for example, and display them regularly. Those changes and an educational campaign in New Mexico would be subject to review by the state.
“We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” said a statement issued by a Meta spokesperson late Thursday.
“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” it added.
The Associated Press emailed and called the New Mexico Department of Justice for comment on Thursday.
The court said federal children’s privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, means it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age verification purposes.
The court also noted that ordering Meta to verify children’s ages for only Meta and not other social media companies would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.
Instead, the court ordered Meta to continue to improve its age assurance tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence to determine people’s age based on signals such as who their friends are and what types of content they post and consume. Meta must also attempt to develop a dedicated “under-13-years-of-age prediction model” in the next two years.
Additionally, Meta should also request proof of age for Instagram and Facebook users in New Mexico it estimates to be under 13. If it determines a user to be under 13, or under 18 but without being able to estimate a specific age, Meta must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until the user verifies their age.
The company must also partner with schools or a child safety organization to create a reporting portal where school staff can flag users who may be under 13. And it must delete personal information it has collected on users under 13.
The court ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a year on how it’s complying with the abatement measures.
