A New Mexico judge ordered Meta on Thursday to pay $567 million into a fund for youth mental health, and to make real changes to how the platform treats teen users, according to CNN. It’s the second big penalty in this case. A jury already found Meta liable back in March and ordered $375 million in damages.
The order is not just about money. Meta now has to delete accounts and personal data belonging to users under 13, make teen accounts private by default, and turn off push notifications for under-18 users during school hours and late at night. The company also has to stop letting New Mexico users have romantic or sexualized conversations with its AI chatbots.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid didn’t mince words. He compared Meta’s platforms to a polluting factory, writing that the harm doesn’t stay contained and it “migrate[s] to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world.”
Meta says it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms,” the company said in a statement.
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta on Thursday to pay $567 million into a fund for youth mental health, and to make real changes to how the platform treats teen users, according to CNN. It’s the second big penalty in this case. A jury already found Meta liable back in March and ordered $375 million in damages.
The order is not just about money. Meta now has to delete accounts and personal data belonging to users under 13, make teen accounts private by default, and turn off push notifications for under-18 users during school hours and late at night. The company also has to stop letting New Mexico users have romantic or sexualized conversations with its AI chatbots.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid didn’t mince words. He compared Meta’s platforms to a polluting factory, writing that the harm doesn’t stay contained and it “migrate[s] to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world.”
Meta says it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal. “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms,” the company said in a statement.