A New Mexico jury has found Meta Platforms liable for endangering children on Facebook and Instagram, ordering the tech giant to pay $375 million in civil penalties in what state officials are calling a landmark victory for child safety online.
The Tuesday verdict found Meta guilty of misleading consumers about platform safety and failing to protect young users from sexually explicit content, online solicitation, and human trafficking under state consumer protection laws. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called it “a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety.”
The case stemmed from a 2023 lawsuit following an undercover investigation where prosecutors created decoy profiles of children aged 14 and younger. The lawsuit alleged Meta proactively directed underage users toward explicit content, allowed adults to contact minors for pornographic images, and enabled the sharing of child pornography.
During the trial, prosecutors presented internal Meta documents and testimony suggesting the company ignored safety warnings and designed features that enabled predatory behavior and addiction among young users.
Meta disputes the verdict and plans to appeal. Company spokesman Andy Stone said Meta “work[s] hard to keep people safe” and remains “confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
This case is among dozens of similar lawsuits against social media companies nationwide. More than 2,000 individual lawsuits are pending in federal court, and a parallel case in Los Angeles is currently in jury deliberations, with thousands more cases awaiting trial in California.
This ruling shows that Meta’s platforms connected predators with children, which led to sexual abuse and human trafficking. While child sexual abuse is not an inevitable byproduct of Meta’s technology, it is the result of deliberate design choices that the company made to get children to engage with their apps, and the consequences have been far-reaching and severely damaging for millions of kids and their families.
