A New Mexico state court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to pay $942 million in fines for harm caused to children by its social media algorithms and inadequate age verification, according to infohub.kz.
Judge Brian Bidshead described Meta as a "public threat." The company was found guilty of designing addictive algorithms. The court ordered Meta to rectify this and improve age verification to prevent sexual exploitation of minors.
On August 7, the court ordered the tech giant to pay $567 million. Earlier, in March, the same court fined the company $375 million. At that time, a jury found that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed information about their sexual exploitation on its platforms. As The Guardian explains, these are two stages of the same case, bringing the total fines to $942 million.
Most of the funds, according to the judge, will be directed to treating young New Mexico residents for internet addiction, with the remainder going to prevention efforts.
Meta plans to appeal both fines. The company denies that it is not doing enough to protect teenagers from harmful content and intends to challenge the court's assertion.
The lawsuit by the New Mexico Attorney General's office is the first successful case proving that social media harms children's health. The court also required Meta to impose a limit on social media use—no more than 90 hours per month.
Earlier, it was reported that WhatsApp users worldwide complained about account blocks. The outage was linked to issues in the automated system designed to combat unwanted content.