New Mexico proposes $3.7bn fine for Meta and sweeping changes to its social platforms

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/05/new-mexico-meta-court-fine

State’s attorney general petitions for overhaul of how Meta’s child safety protocol in second phase of landmark case

Meta has returned to court in the US this week for the second phase of a lawsuit brought by Raúl Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general, following a March verdict that found the company liable for child safety failures and imposed a $375m fine. On Monday, the state petitioned for a legal sanction against the company, a monetary penalty 10 times the original amount, and a sweeping, drastic overhaul of Meta’s child safety protocols.

In the second part of the landmark case, known as the remedies phase, the state is asking for Meta to be declared a public nuisance and for the judge to order the company to pay $3.7bn in an abatement plan. The money would fund programs for law enforcement, mental health services and educators. The state is also requesting that the judge force a series of design changes to Meta’s platforms aimed at improving child safety, including universal age verification, de-encryption of children’s messages, a guardian account linked to every child’s account, and a child safety monitor tasked with holding Meta to account for five years.

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If every jurisdiction fined them like that .. they’d cease to be a going concern .. seems like a win win proposition.

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Holy shit, it’d be amazing to get a real, punitive fine for a mega corp for once.

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It would be, but this isn’t it.

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At least finish reading the damn summary

The state is also requesting that the judge force a series of design changes to Meta’s platforms aimed at improving child safety, including universal age verification, de-encryption of children’s messages

Does this not sound familiar to you?

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Yeah, actually. That sounds fucking great. The whole age verification push came from Meta lobbyists who wanted to push the burden of age-verification onto the OS and app-distributors, rather than the social platforms. That way Meta can wipe their hands of responsibility regarding the issue and its connections to mental health issues in children.

Please. Tell Meta to fuck off and keep the onus on them.

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Zuck should do some jail time

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Comments in Technology@beehaw.org

child safety, including universal age verification, de-encryption of children’s messages, a guardian account linked to every child’s account, and a child safety monitor

This is all the things and more that people here were loosing their shit over because there was a PR in systemd for adding a birthdate field.

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They’re requesting mostly wrong solutions for real problems.

Age verification doesn’t address social media’s problems, but does increase data collection and decrease privacy. Same for decrypting private messages.

A guardian account does seem reasonable.

They could also completely turn off user seach for minors, so they would have to add contacts by username or email, and couldn’t reach or be reached easily by online strangers.

Minors could circumvent this if there’s no age verification. But today’s age verification methods are neither privacy-friendly nor hard to circumvent. Until they are, it’s not worth requiring age verification.

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