A Santa Fe jury on Tuesday found that Meta misled consumers about the safety of its platform and the risks to children, and ordered it to pay $375 million in civil penalties.
In a press release issued shortly after the ruling, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres’ office called the ruling “a watershed moment for all parents concerned about what happens to their children when they go online.”
The verdict, reached after a six-week trial, found Meta liable for both claims brought by the state under the Unfair Practices Act. Fines of $5,000 per violation, the maximum allowed by law, may seem paltry for a company valued at $1.5 trillion by public market investors. But the amount is less important than the fact that this is the first jury verdict of its kind against meth for harm to young people.
“Meth executives knew their products were harmful to children, ignored warnings from employees and lied to the public about what they knew,” Torres said in a statement after the ruling. “Today, jurors joined families, educators and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
New Mexico’s case against the company grew out of a 2023 undercover investigation in which state investigators created decoy accounts on Facebook and Instagram posing as users under 14. These accounts sent sexually explicit material and were solicited for sex by several New Mexico men who were arrested in May 2024. From conversations with the account, the two were arrested at a motel where they believed they were meeting a 12-year-old girl.
This strategy was the basis of the state’s lawsuit. Evidence produced by the company, along with internal meta-documents and testimony from former employees, showed that repeated warnings from company staff and outside child safety experts about the dangers on the platform were largely ignored.
Some of the most damaging testimony came from people who worked within the company.
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Arturo Bejar, who served as Meta’s engineering and product lead for six years starting in 2009, spoke in court (after testifying before the Senate several years ago) about his efforts to warn Meta executives after his 14-year-old daughter received unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. He also testified that the same personalized algorithms that make Meta’s platform effective at targeting ads could be just as useful to predators.
“This product is really great at connecting people with their interests, and if your interest is little girls, it’s really great at connecting you with little girls,” Bejart said.
Brian Borland, a former vice president of partnership product marketing who worked at Meta for about 12 years, testified when he left the company in 2020 that he “never believed that safety was a top priority” to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Zuckerberg was deposed as part of the proceedings, but recordings of his deposition, filmed a year ago and released to jurors earlier this month, provided some of the trial’s more memorable moments. Zuckerberg described research on whether the platform is addictive as “inconclusive” and said the state rejected the study, noting that Meta’s own researchers found that some product features were designed to trigger a dopamine response and increase time spent using the app.
Asked if, as a parent, you have a right to know whether the products your child is using are addictive, Zuckerberg said: “There’s a lot to figure out.” Additionally, he said that he and his wife personally examine the products to make sure they are “fit for use” before giving them to their children, and “also supervise how the products are used.” His children are “young,” he noted.
Unsurprisingly, Meta said it plans to appeal. “We respectfully disagree with this ruling,” a spokesperson told media, adding that the company is “working hard to keep people safe” on its platform.
The New Mexico lawsuit isn’t Mehta’s only legal headache. Meta and YouTube are also embroiled in a lawsuit in Los Angeles over claims that their platforms are addictive and harm young users.
A second verdict could come soon. The lawsuit, brought by a plaintiff known as KGM, is pending before a jury. The plaintiff is a 20-year-old California woman who claims she became addicted to social media as a child and suffered from anxiety, depression, and body image issues as a result. (TikTok and Snap were also defendants and settled before trial.)
On Monday, the judge overseeing the Los Angeles case directed jurors to continue deliberating after the panel indicated it would have difficulty reaching a verdict on one of the defendants, increasing the possibility of at least a partial retrial.
Meanwhile, the second phase of New Mexico’s case, a non-jury trial on the public nuisance claims scheduled to begin on May 4, could include court-ordered changes to Meta’s platform, including age verification requirements and new protections for minors, as well as further penalties.
Rather than alleging that Meta violated any specific consumer protection law, the state alleges that the company’s platform caused widespread harm to the health and safety of New Mexico residents.
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