A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, to pay USD 567 million to address harms caused to young people by its platforms, in the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March.
In a ruling issued late Thursday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid said USD 420 million of the amount will be allocated to treatment services for young people. The remaining funds will be used over the next five years for awareness and prevention programmes, screening services and other related costs.
The ruling follows the first phase of the trial, in which a jury ordered Meta to pay USD 375 million in civil penalties. Jurors found that the company knowingly contributed to harms to children’s mental health and concealed information about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
During the second phase, prosecutors had sought broader changes to Meta’s operations, including measures to curb addictive features, strengthen age-verification systems and prevent child sexual exploitation through default privacy protections and increased oversight.
However, the court said federal children’s privacy laws restrict Meta’s ability to use certain age-verification measures for children under 13. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) prevents the company from requiring children to provide personal information or allowing them to be passively tracked online for age-verification purposes.
The court also said requiring Meta alone to implement age-verification measures, without imposing similar requirements on other social media companies, would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.
Meta under scrutiny in India
Meta executives faced a second consecutive day of questioning by Indian government officials on Thursday over Instagram’s content recommendation algorithms, compliance with Indian laws and measures to tackle harmful online content, government sources said.
During the hour-long meeting, Meta acknowledged there were “serious issues” and assured the government that it would take continuous steps to address its concerns, the sources told PTI.
The government is expected to continue pressing the social media giant to undertake sustained measures and improvements to address concerns related to its platforms, officials said.
Meta’s delegation, led by its global affairs head Joel Kaplan, met Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for the second day in a row. The meetings followed a government summons issued after the temporary restriction of a Facebook post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On Thursday, officials questioned Meta over its compliance with Indian laws, the functioning of its algorithms and the safeguards it has in place to meet constitutional and legal requirements.
According to government sources, Meta assured officials that it was “working hard” to address concerns surrounding deepfakes, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), bot accounts and other forms of synthetic content.
Technical aspects of Meta’s platforms also featured prominently in the discussions. Officials said the company explained the mechanisms and parameters it uses to address concerns over the fairness of its algorithms.
The discussions are expected to continue for another three to four days. The next round will focus on technical issues, with Meta’s technical executives expected to meet their counterparts in the government. IT Secretary S Krishnan may lead the discussions, sources said.
“We will push them hard, and technical discussions will continue,” a government source said.
Kaplan, who previously served in the administration of US President George Wย Bush, including as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, joined Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2011. He did not take questions from the media following the meetings on either Wednesday or Thursday.
With inputs from PTI, AP
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