US court slaps $567m fine on Meta for harming children's mental health

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - LOS ANGELES — A US judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay $567 million for its failure to warn the public about dangers the social media giant’s platforms posed to children, marking the largest ruling against the company over child safety.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid of the New Mexico court ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay the sum into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts from social media platforms.

The ruling comes as a part of the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March. At the time, a jury found that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms, and imposed the maximum penalty — a fine of $375 million.

The ruling on Thursday an additional to that fine, bringing the total amount Meta is responsible for to $942 million.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the social media giant is a "public nuisance" akin to air pollution and that it must put the money in a fund aimed at reducing future harms.

Judge Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its product and "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated".

A spokesman for Meta, which owns and operates Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, said Thursday: "We disagree with the ruling and will appeal."

"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."

Regarding the earlier $375 million verdict in the case, Meta had said it intended to appeal the ruling and gave a similar explanation. It was the first time that a state had successfully sued Meta over child safety issues.

Meta is currently facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over similar issues. In addition to the New Mexico rulings, Meta earlier this year lost a case in Los Angeles making similar claims.

The New Mexico case stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought by attorneys for the State of New Mexico, arguing Meta should be held liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.

In the first phase of the trial, Meta was found to have repeatedly violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act as its recommendation algorithms essentially "steered" young users toward harmful content and contacts.

Recommendation algorithms are the tools that Meta uses to automatically curate the content a user sees on its platforms.

In addition to being the largest fine Meta has received over child safety issues, the ruling also appears to be the first time that a social media company has been deemed a public nuisance.

The fund that Meta has been ordered to create will be used to pay for efforts to mitigate "the wide-ranging impacts of the harm", Judge Biedscheid said.

A vast majority of the money, totaling $420 million, will go towards treatment of harms Meta's platforms have already caused, through the funding of "appropriate clinical or other behavioral health programs and professionals," according to the order.

Another chunk of the money will go towards training around awareness and prevention, including for teachers and health professionals on how to deal with social media harms against children.

The judge also ordered Meta to enact other measures, including ensuring that no account of a user under age 18 is recommended to an adult and that no adult can message an underage user, banning the sending or receiving of nudity by underage users and enacting a "1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation."

Next week, another major trial against Meta begins in California. Nearly three dozen US states' attorneys general are suing the company for violating child privacy laws.