A court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375m (£279m) for misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children.
A jury found that Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said the verdict is “historic” and marks the first time that a state has successfully sued Meta over child safety issues.
A spokeswoman for Meta, led by chairman and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, said the company disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal.
She said: “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
The jury found that Meta was responsible for violating New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act because it misled the public about the safety of its platforms for young users.
During a trial that lasted seven weeks, jurors were presented with internal Meta documents and heard testimony from former employees about how the company had been aware of child predators using its platforms.
Arturo Béjar, a former engineering leader at Meta who quit the company in 2021 and became a whistleblower, testified to various experiments he ran on Instagram that showed underage users were served sexualized content.
He said his own young daughter was propositioned for sex by a stranger on Instagram.
State prosecutors showed internal Meta research that, at one point, found 16% of all Instagram users had reported being shown unwanted nudity or sexual activity in a single week.
Meta argued that it has worked over the years to combat problem users of its platforms and promote safe experiences for minors.
In 2024, Instagram released Teen Accounts, giving young users more ways to control their experience. Just last month, it launched a feature that would alert parents if their children are looking for self-harm content.
The total civil penalty of $375m was reached after the jury decided there were thousands of violations of the act, each with a maximum penalty of $5,000.
Meta is also involved in a separate trial in Los Angeles, in which a young woman claims that she became addicted to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, owned by Google, as a child because of how they are intentionally designed.
There are thousands of similar lawsuits winding their way through the US courts.
New Mexico sued Meta in 2023, claiming the company “steered” young users to content that was sexually explicit, showed child sexual abuse, or even exposed them to solicitation of such material and sex trafficking.
It said the company did so through its recommendation algorithms, which are essentially tools that Meta uses to automatically curate the content a user sees on its platforms.
“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew,” Torrez said.
“Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
By BBC News
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