Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth (www.techpolicy.press)
- Reference: 0184886684
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/08/07/0053247/court-orders-meta-to-establish-567-million-fund-to-abate-harms-to-youth
- Source link: https://www.techpolicy.press/new-mexico-court-orders-meta-to-establish-567-million-fund-to-abate-harms-to-youth/
> The decision follows the second phase of in the State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., which consisted of a bench trial. Its central question was whether Meta's platforms amounted to a public nuisance in New Mexico, and, if the court found that they did, what remedy would be needed to address it. In March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, awarding $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated [4]less than a day following that nearly seven-week trial. The $567 million abatement fund would be in addition to the civil penalties, according to today's decision.
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> New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging the company made false public statements about the safety of its platforms while knowing internally that its products facilitated child sexual exploitation. The court [5]denied Meta's Section 230 defense in May 2024. In today's decision, the court again asserted that "Section 230 does not preclude the State's public nuisance claim," but the decision attempted to thread the needle on issues that the court determined might have run "afoul" of the statute, or of the First Amendment, such as issuing remedies around any particular product feature.
[1] https://nmcourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/D-101-CV-2023-02838-Final-FOFCOL-and-Judgment-of-the-Court.pdf
[2] https://www.techpolicy.press/new-mexico-court-orders-meta-to-establish-567-million-fund-to-abate-harms-to-youth/
[3] https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/03/25/172211/meta-loses-trial-after-arguing-child-exploitation-was-inevitable
[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/jury-reaches-verdict-in-meta-child-safety-trial-in-new-mexico.html
[5] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/meta-fails-to-escape-new-mexico-ags-child-sex-abuse-lawsuit
Not even close to justice (Score:4, Interesting)
Meta created the mental health equivalent of smoking, and all they get is a slap on the wrist. Go read The Anxious Generation by Haidt or Girls by Freya India. They profited off suicide, bullying, objectification of girls and sexualization of children; itâ(TM)s all in there. However angry you are at social media companies, itâ(TM)s not nearly angry enough.
Re: (Score:3)
> Meta created the mental health equivalent of smoking ...
And what would we think if parents were just going out and buying cigarettes for their kids?
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OK, but our legal system doesn't actually permit us to punish the people who did it with as much harm as they doled out...
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Yes, but also, this is huge. People love to make these "well it's just the cost of doing business" comments so much that I don't think they really think about the individual case much. This is unprecedented, these legal rulings are in fact an existential threat to Meta. Zuck does not see this as a slap on the wrist. He's stupid, but he's not that stupid. They may be the first big tech company to literally go out of business, and it may be to legal damages.
New Mexico only has a population of just over two mi
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Suicide rates are down overall and down with teens compared to the 80's and 90's. For people who grew up in that period and are in the 40's to 60's, the suicide rate is up.
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Testosterone for the Military ?
Chickenfeed (Score:3)
This is chickenfeed. Given the damage Meta has done, it should be dismantled and its executives indicted for harming consumers.
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> This is chickenfeed. Given the damage Meta has done, it should be dismantled and its executives indicted for harming consumers.
This is one state. If other states pile on (some may, some may not), it might actually be more than just a rounding error in Meta's yearly financial statements.
If there was a functional federal government, I could image a serious DoJ investigation. I don't expect that to happen.
Deny, delay, defer (Score:2)
The appeals will go on for a years before any of the money might even be available.
That should get them through a good solid week (Score:4, Insightful)
Social media does have a place when it's actually social media which means it's meant to bring like-minded people together to socialize.
So it can be a good thing when it helps you find a friend group or a bunch of guys to play Warhammer with or whatever.
The problem is that as soon as profit motive kicks it the goal is going to be to get as much engagement so you can do as many advertisements and steal as much data as possible. What's worse is that these platforms make money either by selling your data or advertising. The date is selling is obviously bad advertising by itself should be relatively harmless but online advertising just doesn't work. It's barely functional for branding exercises at best and completely useless for direct sales.
It is however very good at finding suckers and marks and people to victimize through advertising so virtually everything on social media being advertised is a scam. It's actually a great way to find out if something is a garbage product look and see if you can find ads for it online when you're in private browsing or using a VPN and if you can odds are good that product is trash.
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> What's worse is that these platforms make money either by selling your data or advertising.
To be fair, Facebook's data collection did get taken down a notch on the evil scale by Flock.
> It is however very good at finding suckers and marks and people to victimize through advertising so virtually everything on social media being advertised is a scam.
I've been getting these incessant ads lately for this e-scooter that more-or-less shares a lot of design similarities with the Bird Three (if your city was never invaded by them, it's a rather large, heavy, non-folding scooter designed specifically for dockless rental use). The ads use obnoxious AI generated music and mostly seem to contain rebuttals of criticism over their design choices. I wouldn't really go as