Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has suffered a legal defeat over children's safety on its platforms. Last week, a New Mexico jury decided against the company in a lawsuit brought by state prosecutors after an undercover investigation by the state.
As reported by the Associated Press, the trial went on for seven weeks, with prosecutors arguing that sites like Instagram and Facebook "prioritized profits over safety, and violated parts of the state’s Unfair Practices Act," with Meta failing to protect children from sexual exploitation.
"The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety," said New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez in a press release from the state's Department of Justice. "Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew."
The stinger is that Meta's being slapped with the "maximum penalty under the law of $5,000 per violation," which comes to a grand total of $375 million in penalties. Considering that Meta reported over $200 billion in annual revenue last year, it's not going to upend the tech world overnight, but it is definitionally not nothing. The AP noted that the penalty is "less than one-fifth of what prosecutors were seeking" and that Meta's stock was up 5% in the hours after the news came out.
Granted, the trial does have a next phase beginning in May. "We will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms," said Torrez. For its part Meta released a statement saying, "We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."
just some quick napkin math on this, $375 million is 0.18% of meta's reported 2025 revenue of $200.97 billion, or 0.62% of meta's reported 2025 profit of $60.46 billion. $375 million is the maximum penalty allowed by law. the system just like, fundamentally doesn't work lol
— @jordo.bsky.social (@jordo.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T19:10:35.390Z
As reported by NPR, a similar verdict landed a day later in California, with a jury deciding Meta and Google's social media platforms were negligent in protecting young users. While the companies were only required to pay a shared total of $6 million, the trial is a test case "tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits."
