New Mexico court orders Meta to pay additional $567M in child safety case

A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay another $567 million into an abatement fund over the harm its platforms caused to children's mental health. As TechCrunch reports, the ruling came from Santa Fe state court Judge Bryan Biedscheid late Thursday — bringing Meta's total payout in the case to $942 million once you add March's $375 million penalty.

Of the new $567 million, $420 million will go toward treatment services for young people, with the rest funding awareness, prevention and screening programs over the next five years. The case was brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (case number D-101-CV-2023-02838); in a 68-page ruling, the court found Meta's platforms implemented features "optimized for engagement" that are "harmful to teenagers" and failed to adequately warn users of the risks. Beyond the payout, the court ordered Meta to build an AI-driven under-13 prediction model within two years, request age verification from suspected under-13 users, delete data already collected on such children, hide like counts from minors (visible only with parental consent), pause push notifications to under-18 users between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and cap their platform usage at 90 hours a month.

“For years, Meta knew its platforms were harming New Mexico's kids, from feeding a youth mental health crisis to connecting predators with children, and it chose engagement and profit over their safety. Today, Meta is paying for that choice.”

— Raúl Torrez, New Mexico Attorney General

• New $567M fine plus March's $375M brings the total to $942 million
• $420M of the new sum goes to youth treatment services over 5 years
• Meta must hide like counts from minors and cap their usage at 90 hours a month

Meta said it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal. Company spokesperson Andy Stone said: "We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts." The payout lands against a backdrop we've covered before about Meta's finances — the company is promising everyone a personal AI agent even as its free cash flow collapsed 91%; still, Meta's 2025 annual profit came in around $60 billion, so even a nearly billion-dollar penalty remains a relatively modest sum for the company.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.