For the first time, a court has declared a social media platform a public nuisance. The designation came in New Mexico, where a judge ordered Meta to pay an extra $567M into a fund for harm to children, pushing the company’s total bill in the case to $942M when combined with an earlier $375M penalty.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid framed the company as a factory whose product is advertising and content, with the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children as the pollution it produces. The dispute itself started back in 2023, when state attorneys general filed suit. By March, a jury had already sided against the company, finding it repeatedly broke New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act because its recommendation algorithms directed young users toward harmful content and predatory contacts. The judge-only stage that followed was meant to settle whether that damage rose to a public nuisance for the whole community, and it did.
Most of the new money, $420M, will fund clinical and behavioral health programs for affected young people, with the rest going to prevention training for teachers and healthcare workers over roughly five years.
The order also mandates platform changes: no recommending under-18 accounts to adults, no adult messaging of minors, a nudity ban for underage accounts, removal of teen like counts, overnight notification blocks, and a 90-hour monthly usage cap for minors across Instagram and Facebook.
Meta said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal. The company faces parallel pressure elsewhere, with nearly three dozen state attorneys general pursuing a separate child privacy case and another major trial scheduled next week in California.
