New Mexico Tests A New Way To Rein In Meta

The milestone ruling by a New Mexico court last week that found Meta contributed to a youth mental health crisis could serve as a blueprint for other states — and individuals — to mount lawsuits seeking to hold tech companies liable for harms stemming from their platforms.

New Mexico Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered the parent company of Facebook and Instagram to make significant changes to its product features for users in New Mexico and pay $567 million to mitigate the negative impacts of its platforms on schools, hospitals and police. Thursday’s ruling marks the first time a court has ordered a broad package of user-experience changes to a major social media platform based on a final judgment about harms to users.

The order requires Meta to “eliminate push notifications” for users under 18 during nighttime and school hours, excluding weekends and certain high-priority messages, and to make “like counts” hidden by default. It also directs Meta to cap combined Facebook and Instagram use by minors at 90 hours per month, among other surface-level changes to the platform experience.

The hefty financial penalty comes in addition to the $375 million in civil fines that jurors levied against Meta in March for endangering young users and misleading the public about risks associated with the products.

The company said in a statement that it remains confident in its record of protecting teens online and “will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

Meta has said it plans to appeal the ruling. Still, New Mexico’s winning legal strategy, which cast the platform’s effects as a “public nuisance,” and Biedscheid’s analysis, which compared those effects to a “polluting factory,” are likely to influence other plaintiffs dealing with ongoing and planned litigation. Biedscheid’s orders to make specific changes to Meta’s platforms could also draw attention from judges and legislators working to regulate social media and other online platforms.

Attorney Joe Rice, founding member of plaintiffs’ litigation firm Motley Rice, said the ruling furthers the ability to hold Big Tech accountable for alleged child safety failures.

“Though the judge’s ruling applies specifically to New Mexico, it could result in meaningful changes to Meta’s platforms for kids in every state by creating a new path forward for Attorneys General across the country,” Rice said. Rice has served as one of the lead attorneys in multiple historic multi-district cases, including litigation over harms from tobacco and opioid use.

Peter Chapman, associate director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute at Georgetown University, said the ruling could impact how arguments are presented and the kinds of remedies requested in similar cases.

“It’s a momentous decision in the arc of these cases seeking to hold companies responsible for the design of their products,” Chapman said, adding that the ruling is likely to impact presentations by plaintiffs “now preparing to enter trial, with jury selection starting in the coming weeks.”

Trial proceedings in a similar case against Meta by Tennessee’s Republican attorney general are underway. Jury selection in a separate federal trial over child safety claims by California and several other states begins this week. And the first trial against the company in a case brought by a school district is set to kick off in February.

Eric Goldman, co-director of the Datta Center for High Tech Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, said he was skeptical of some portions of the court’s reasoning, and that it may not necessarily establish longstanding legal precedent.

Still, “it’s another accelerator for critics” who believe “that there’s some fundamental set of harms [from social media] that need to be addressed,” Goldman said. “Any new court opinions that give [state legislators] a new idea or that validate their intuitions are helpful to their efforts,” he added.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D), who brought the state’s case, also called for other states to follow his lead during a Friday press conference, adding that the ruling should prompt legislative efforts at both the state and federal levels.

Biedscheid’s order highlights “some of the types of remedies that you will start to see in other states,” Torrez said, adding that he spoke with California Attorney General Rob Bonta about the case on Thursday.

The California trial begins Aug. 18.