New York —
A jury on Tuesday found Meta violated New Mexico law in a case accusing it of failing to warn users about the dangers of its platforms and protect children from sexual predators.
The jury found Meta liable on all counts, including for willfully engaging in “unfair and deceptive” and “unconscionable” trade practices, and ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.
Meta for years has faced concerns about risks to kids and teens on its platforms from parents, whistleblowers, advocates and lawmakers. Tuesday’s decision marks the first time the company has been held accountable in a jury trial for those issues.
A Meta spokesperson said the company “respectfully” disagrees and plans to appeal the decision.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 for allegedly creating a “breeding ground” for child predators on Facebook and Instagram, claims that the company denies. The jury’s award was smaller than the billions in damages New Mexico had sought, but a later portion of the case to be presented directly to the judge could also force Meta to make changes to its platforms and pay additional penalties.
The case is part of a wave of legal pressure Meta and other social media platforms are facing over the safety of young users. As jurors in New Mexico state court delivered a verdict, jurors in Los Angeles are considering a separate case against Meta and YouTube accusing them of intentionally creating addictive features that harmed a young woman’s mental health. Social media giants are also facing hundreds of other cases from individuals, school districts and state attorneys general — some of which are set to go to trial later this year.
Closing arguments on Monday followed a six-week trial that included testimony from Meta executives and former employees-turned-whistleblowers. Details from the attorney general’s undercover investigation into child sexual exploitation on Meta’s platforms, which led to three arrests, were also discussed in the courtroom.
The New Mexico jury was tasked with deciding whether Meta willfully made false and misleading statements about the safety of its platforms or engaged in “unconscionable” practices by knowingly designing its platforms to harm young people.
“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content,” the Meta spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
Torrez called the decision “a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety.”
“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough,” Torrez said in a statement Tuesday.
Ahead of the decision, a Meta spokesperson on Monday pointed to an earlier statement saying that the New Mexico lawsuit “makes sensationalist, irrelevant and distracting arguments by cherry picking select documents” and disregarding the company’s “longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
Meta attorney Kevin Huff argued in court that the company has been honest with users that some bad actors and inappropriate content can slip through its safety filters. But he said 40,000 people at Meta are responsible for making Facebook and Instagram safe, and that the company invests heavily in measures to protect young users.
The New Mexico attorney general’s office created multiple fake Facebook and Instagram profiles posing as children as part of its investigation into Meta. Those test accounts encountered sexually suggestive content and requests to share pornographic content, the suit alleges.
The fake child accounts were allegedly contacted and solicited for sex by the three New Mexico adult men who were arrested in May of 2024. Two of the three men were arrested at a motel, where they allegedly believed they would be meeting up with a 12-year-old girl, based on their conversations with the decoy accounts.
During the trial, the state argued Meta failed to do enough to prevent bad actors on its platforms from contacting kids.
Ex-Meta engineering director-turned-whistleblower Arturo Bejar testified about his efforts to warn Meta executives after he says his own 14-year-old daughter received sexual solicitations on Instagram. And he claimed that the highly personalized algorithms that make Meta’s platforms so successful at serving ads can also benefit predators.
“The product is very good at connecting people with interests, and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls,” Bejar said.
Former Meta Vice President of Partnerships Brian Boland testified that he “absolutely did not believe that safety was a priority” to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg when he left the company in 2020. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, conversely, testified that Meta has rolled out safety features such as Teen Accounts despite their negative impact on growth and engagement.
The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats — a privacy measure that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a conversation — could make it harder for law enforcement to catch predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year.
Regarding the encryption decision, a Meta spokesperson told CNN that, “very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months. Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.”
A Meta spokesperson previously told CNN that “child exploitation is a horrific crime and we’ve spent years building technology to combat it.” Meta’s Head of Child Safety Policy Ravi Sinha testified about the company’s work with law enforcement to prevent and report instances of child exploitation.
The company’s lawyers questioned the legitimacy of the New Mexico investigation, accusing the attorney general’s office of using hacked or stolen accounts and photos of real, non-consenting children to lure predators. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone called it “ethically compromised” in a series of posts on X last month.
Torrez previously called those criticisms a “distraction.”
“One of the most common things is to lash out and try and attack an investigation, rather than to really focus on their own accountability,” he told CNN Monday. “I don’t think it’s something that the jury is really going to fall for.”
This story has been updated with additional updates and developments.