A New Mexico judge ordered Meta Platforms to pay more than $900 million and limit the time young people in the state can spend on its apps, significantly increasing the cost of the landmark child safety verdict against the Facebook and Instagram parent.
The judge said Thursday that Meta must create a new $567 million abatement fund in addition to paying $375 million in civil penalties that a jury previously ordered. The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.
The creation of the fund, aimed at rectifying harms caused by the Facebook parent’s social-media apps, was “necessary, due to the wide-ranging impacts of the harm and the complex nature of the remedy,” state Judge Bryan Biedscheid said. The dollar-amount of the abatement fund was slightly smaller than the $779.5 million attorneys for the state sought.
Meta said it disagreed with the ruling and planned to appeal. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” a spokesman said.
The Thursday ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by Attorney General Raúl Torrez, accusing the company of allowing young users to see sexually explicit content and be easily lured by predators on the apps. A jury found in March that Meta willfully violated state consumer-protection laws.
“New Mexico led the way in the courtroom,” Torrez said in a statement. “Now other states, and other countries confronting the same crisis, have a roadmap they can follow.”
Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits from state attorneys general, school districts and individual plaintiffs that allege the company gave priority to growth over the safety of its underage users. The New Mexico case was the first to test questions about whether social-media companies should be held responsible for content on their platforms.
The next trial, brought by four state attorneys general, begins jury selection in Oakland, Calif., next week. Meta said in a court filing that the states in that case are asking for more than $1 trillion in damages.
A Los Angeles jury found earlier this year that Meta and YouTube were liable in the case of a young woman who said excessive use of the products led to mental health problems. Last week, the company said legal proceedings in the second quarter alone cost it $2.4 billion .
Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at meghan.bobrowsky@wsj.com and Erin Mulvaney at erin.mulvaney@wsj.com
