New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay $567 Million Fund in Child Harm Case

A court in the US state of New Mexico has ruled that Meta must pay $567 million into a state remediation fund as relief in a case where its social media platforms were found to constitute a public nuisance. The fund will be used to address the impact of the platforms on the mental health of young people. The payment is in addition to the $375 million civil penalty Meta previously paid after the court found the company had violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. The second phase of the trial, which began in May, was held to determine whether Meta's conduct amounted to a public nuisance and whether the company should be required to modify its products.

According to the ruling handed down by the judge on Thursday, about $420 million of the fund will be dedicated to treatment work for those harmed by the platforms, with the remainder going toward public education and awareness, prevention and intervention, screening and assessment, referral coordination, and program implementation and quality evaluation. In the ruling, the judge noted that while Meta is not the only company with such problems, the substantial evidence in this case confirmed that its social media platforms are a significant contributor to the current mental health crisis among young people in New Mexico. Meta disclosed in its second-quarter earnings filing that the New Mexico attorney general intends to seek up to $62.85 billion in penalties in this case.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres filed the lawsuit against Meta in 2023. The case stems from an undercover investigation in which investigators created a fictitious social media account for a 13-year-old girl that repeatedly received images and targeted solicitation messages from abusers.

In addition to establishing the remediation fund, Thursday's ruling requires Meta to use artificial intelligence to continuously improve its age-verification models and tools in New Mexico, and to strive to develop, within two years, a predictive model specifically designed to identify users under the age of 13. Other remedial measures include simplifying reporting channels for misconduct involving minors, and building reporting portals in cooperation with schools or child safety organizations so that school administrators can flag accounts on major social media platforms that are suspected of belonging to users under 13.