Meta is ordered to pay nearly a billion $ in total for the damage to young people attributed to its platforms and will have to limit their access to certain features of Facebook and Instagram, after his conviction for “disturbing public order” by a judge in New Mexico, a first in the United States.
The magistrate ordered the American giant on Thursday to create a reparation fund of $567 million, called upon to finance mental health and prevention programs for young people over five years.
This amount is in addition to the $375 million in fines imposed in March by the jury of a civil court in Santa Fe, which found Meta failing in the protection of minor users.
The scope of the judgment is limited to New Mexico but the bill there now reaches $942 million.
It could get tougher in the event of similar setbacks in other proceedings targeting Mark Zuckerberg’s group, which a new trial awaits next week in California.
“Protect children”
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez hailed “a historic victory for the people of New Mexico, for families across the country” and “for every parent who has worried about the effects of social media on their child.”
“This case has always been about protecting children, defending families and ensuring that one of the largest technology companies in the world cannot profit without consequences from practices that endanger young people,” he defended in a press release.
“We disagree with this decision and we will appeal,” responded a Meta spokesperson to AFP, saying he was “confident” in the group’s record “in terms of protecting adolescents online.”
Judge Bryan Biedscheid accompanied his decision with a series of unprecedented measures, applicable for five years to the accounts of minors in New Mexico. However, they will be frozen for the duration of the appeal procedure if Meta pays a deposit, and they do not concern WhatsApp messaging.
These measures include a limit of 90 hours per month of cumulative use of Facebook and Instagram for those under 18.
Notifications cut off, “likes” hidden
They also order to cut off certain notifications to minors between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., as well as during class hours during the school year, and to hide the “like” counters from them by default.
The judge also bars any “romantic or sexualized” interactions between the state’s minors and Meta’s artificial intelligence chatbots. And prohibits the use by adults of these assistants to simulate such exchanges with minor characters.
Other obligations include the ban on any adult contacting a minor by message who is not in their contacts, the examination by a human, within 48 hours, of reports of sexual exploitation, and the deletion of accounts suspected of belonging to people under 13 due to lack of proof of age within 30 days.
The judge, however, refused other remedies requested by the prosecutor, such as strict verification of age at registration, considering that a federal law on the protection of children’s data (COPPA) made it legally impossible and that such a constraint imposed on Meta alone would push minors towards its competitors.
It also renounces banning infinite scrolling, automatic video playback or algorithmic recommendations, features highly debated in the various legal proceedings carried out in the United States against the social media giants.
The judge ruled that these features were likely to be protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution on freedom of expression, and by a US telecommunications law, which exempts platforms from liability for content published by users.
New trial in 5 days
Of the $567 million in the fund, nearly three-quarters (420 million) are earmarked for mental health care for adolescents, the rest for screening, prevention and program coordination.
The attorney general demanded 953 million while Meta claimed to owe nothing, or a maximum of 27 million.
In March, the day after the group’s first conviction in New Mexico, a Los Angeles jury for the first time found Meta and Google responsible for the effects of a teenager’s addiction to their platforms.
Meta has appealed all these decisions, but he is in the crosshairs of around thirty states and other trials await him this year in the United States.
One of them, pitting the Menlo Park group against four states (California, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey) is scheduled to begin in five days, on August 12, in Oakland in the San Francisco Bay.
