SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Two landmark jury verdicts against social media companies have arrived at the front of a wave of lawsuits alleging that the popular platforms endanger the mental health of children.
Financial penalties total $381 million in the two cases involving tech giant Meta in New Mexico and both Meta and YouTube in California. The verdicts highlight a growing shift in the public perception of social media companies and their responsibilities toward child safety.
But it may be too soon to tell whether litigation will change the way popular social media and messaging platforms function — or influence the complex algorithms that deliver content to billions of users worldwide.
Here are looming questions as related lawsuits approach trial.
The answer is not really — or, at least, not yet.
Meta — the owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — says it had $201 billion in sales last year.
That revenue stream dwarfs the $375 million in civil penalties imposed on Tuesday by a jury in New Mexico with a verdict that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms.
Meta said it disagrees with the verdicts and plans to appeal the jury’s finding that it violated the state Unfair Practices Act.
And tech companies still are shielded from legal responsibility for posted content, based on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Investors are shrugging off the verdicts. Meta’s stock closed slightly higher Wednesday, although it is down about 8% year-to-date.
The verdicts this week don’t mandate specific changes to the design of social media platforms, nor to the algorithms that make them tick.
But a second phase of the New Mexico trial in May, before a judge with no jury, could spell out changes for Meta’s platforms for local users by court order.
A state district court judge will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance — and could impose restrictions and order the company to pay for programs that remedy potential harms to children.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who filed the lawsuit against Meta in 2023, says his office wants improvements to Meta’s enforcement of minimum age limits and removal of sexual predators — in part by lifting encryption on communication that can interfere with police work.
Meta says it continuously works to improve safety and already has made changes that phase out encryption on Instagram and limit access to explicit content by teenagers, block unsolicited messages to children from adults and help young users manage time spent on its platforms and avoid sleep disruptions.
