New Mexico seeks sweeping Meta changes to protect children online

New Mexico prosecutors pressed for court-ordered redesigns of Meta’s products as the second phase of a landmark bench trial opened in Santa Fe before District Judge Bryan Biedscheid, arguing that child safety requires more than damages. The state wants to curb addictive design features, tighten age verification, harden default privacy settings and add deeper oversight to block child sexual exploitation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The remedies New Mexico is seeking go well beyond a warning or fine. State filings call for limits on infinite scroll and autoplay, restrictions on engagement-based recommendation algorithms and push notifications during school and sleep hours, private-by-default accounts for minors, effective age verification, a ban on adults messaging minors they are not connected to and a child safety monitor to oversee compliance. New Mexico also wants a 90-hour monthly use cap for minors in the state and guardian accounts for every child user, an effort prosecutors say would amount to the strongest protections ever sought against a social media company.

The case advanced after a New Mexico jury in March ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company violated state consumer protection laws by misleading users and endangering children. The New Mexico Department of Justice said the award reflected the maximum allowed under state law, $5,000 per violation. Bloomberg Law reported that jurors returned the verdict after about six weeks of testimony and less than a day of deliberations.

The lawsuit, filed in December 2023, grew out of an undercover investigation in which state officials used decoy child accounts posing as users 14 and younger and found sexually explicit material and adult solicitation. Meta said it will appeal the verdict and has warned it may withdraw Facebook and Instagram from New Mexico if the court adopts remedies the company says are impractical or too expensive. In filings made public April 29, Meta argued that separate New Mexico-specific apps would not make economic or engineering sense.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez dismissed that threat as a "PR stunt," while Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law’s High Tech Law Institute called the fact that the nuisance claim reached trial a "remarkable outcome." The broader stakes reach beyond one company: if Biedscheid accepts the state’s remedies, New Mexico could give other states a legal playbook for forcing structural changes to platform design through the courts, including how algorithms treat minors, how age is verified and who gets access to the most persuasive features of social media.