A New Mexico state court jury on Tuesday held Meta liable for nearly $400 million in civil damages after a trial where the state attorney general accused the Facebook and Instagram operator of failing to safeguard kids who use its apps from child predators.
The civil trial, which began with opening arguments in Santa Fe last month, centered on allegations that Meta violated state consumer protections laws and misled residents about the safety of apps like Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 following an undercover operation involving the creation of a fake social media profile of a 13-year-old girl that he previously told CNBC “was simply inundated with images and targeted solicitations” from child abusers.
Deliberations began Monday, and jurors were tasked with ruling in favor or against the defendant Meta. Jury members found that Meta willfully violated the state’s unfair practices act, and decided the company should pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations
Linda Singer, an attorney representing New Mexico, urged jury members during closing statements to impose a civil penalty against Meta that could top $2 billion.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
Meta denied the state of New Mexico’s allegations and previously said that it is “focused on demonstrating our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
“The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” Torrez said in a statement. “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
When the New Mexico trial’s second phase, conducted without a jury, commences on May 4, a judge will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance and should fund public programs intended to address the alleged harms. The state’s lawyers are also urging Meta to implement changes to its apps and operations, including “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors.”
During the trial, New Mexico prosecutors revealed legal filings detailing internal messages from Meta employees discussing how CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 announcement to make Facebook Messenger end-to-end encrypted by default would impact the ability to disclose to law enforcement some 7.5 million child sexual abuse material reports.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday before the verdict was revealed, Torrez discussed Meta’s argument that the prosecutors cherry picked certain materials to paint an unfair picture about the company, and that Meta has been updating its various apps with safety features.
Torrez said he didn’t think that the jury would “be convinced that they’ve done as much as they can or should have, and that they should be held responsible for it.”
“One of the things that I am really focused on is how we can change the design features of these products, at least within New Mexico, and that would create a standard that could then be modeled elsewhere in the country, and, frankly, around the world,” Torrez said during the sidelines of the Common Sense Summit held in San Francisco.
Torrez said that a similar child-exploitation related suit involving Snap, filed by his office in 2024, is still in the discovery stages and that his team was “able to overcome section 230 motions” in both the Meta and Snap case. The tech industry has argued that the Section 230 provision of the Communications Decency Act should prevent them from being held liable for content shared on their respective services, resulting in prosecutors testing new legal strategies focusing on the design of the apps instead.
Regarding Meta’s criticism that prosecutors are picking certain corporate documents and related materials, Torrez said, “What’s interesting is they accuse us of doing that, but all we’re doing is showing the world what they knew behind closed doors and weren’t willing to tell their users.”
The New Mexico case is one of multiple social media-related trials taking place this year that experts have compared to the Big Tobacco suits from the 1990s due in part to allegations that the companies misled the public about the safety and potential harms of their products.
Jury members in a separate, personal injury trial involving Meta and Google’s YouTube have been deliberating in a Los Angeles Superior court since last Friday. The companies are alleged to have misled the public about the safety and design of their respective apps. The jury must determine whether one or both of the companies implemented certain design features that contributed to the mental distress of a plaintiff who alleged that she became addicted to social media apps when she was underage.
A separate federal trial in the Northern District of California will commence later this year. Multiple school districts and parents across the nation allege that that the actions and apps of Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap caused negative mental health-related harms to teenagers and children.
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