Meta is Mark Zuckerberg’s company that owns several social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. The issue of children’s safety on these platforms has been debated for a long time. This time, a court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay a fine of 375 million dollars for misleading users.
The jury board ruled that the company’s platforms put children at risk and were responsible for exposing them to sexually suggestive content and exposure to sexual predators.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres called the ruling “historic.” He said, this is the first time that a state has successfully filed a case against Meta on the issue of child safety.
A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the ruling and would appeal against it. He said, ‘We work hard to ensure the safety of people on our platform. We are aware of the challenges of identifying and removing harmful individuals and content. We have full confidence in our record of protecting teenagers online.’
According to the BBC report, the company misled the general public about the safety of their platform for young users. The jury found Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act.
Meta’s internal documents were presented to the jury in the seven-week trial. In addition, testimony from former employees revealed that Meta knew in advance that sex offenders were using the company’s platform to target children.
Meta’s former engineering chief Arturo Behar resigned in 2021 as a whistleblower. He also testified in court. He said that various tests carried out on Instagram showed that sexual content was being delivered in front of minor users. He even alleged that his minor daughter received sexual proposals from a stranger on Instagram.
Government counsel presented an internal research report on Meta. It found that, in a given week, 16 percent of Instagram users reported viewing content involving unwanted nudity or sexual activity.
In this context, Meta said that they have been working for a long time to deal with these problematic users and to ensure a safe environment for minors.
Instagram introduced ‘teen accounts’ in 2024, giving teenage users more control over their accounts. In addition, last month they introduced a feature through which a warning will be sent to the parent if a child searches for suicidal content.
The jury assessed a total of $37.5 million in civil penalties for several thousand violations, with a maximum of $5,000 for each violation.
Meta is currently facing another separate lawsuit in Los Angeles. A young woman there complained that platforms like Instagram and Google-owned YouTube got her addicted to them as a child because of their design.
Thousands of other such cases are pending in different US courts.
In 2023, New Mexico sued Meta. It is alleged that the organization has ‘directed’ young users towards sexually explicit content, child sexual abuse material and even offers such content or content related to human trafficking.
Attorney General Torres said, ‘Meta executives knew their products were harming children, ignored warnings from their own employees and lied to the public about what they knew.’
“Today, the jury board agreed with families, educators and child safety experts that enough is enough, no more,” Torres said.
