By Diana Novak Jones
May 4 (Reuters) – The judge overseeing a trial testing New Mexico’s claims that Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms harmed young users’ mental health said on Monday he had concerns that some of the state’s requested remedies could go too far.
Before opening statements began on Monday, Judge Bryan Biedscheid said that after reviewing pretrial filings he was worried some of the changes New Mexico is seeking to Meta’s platforms could amount to “overreach.”
“I am a judge, I am not a legislator, I am not a regulator,” Biedscheid said, adding that he wanted to ensure any proven harms were properly addressed without turning the court into a “one-person legislature.”
The case stems from a lawsuit filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, accusing the social media giant of designing its platforms to addict young users and failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms.
The trial, which Reuters is monitoring on Courtroom View Network, marks the second phase of New Mexico’s lawsuit. A jury in March found Meta violated the state’s consumer protection law by misrepresenting the safety of Facebook and Instagram for young users and ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.
During this phase, the judge will decide whether Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms have created a “public nuisance” under New Mexico law — a finding that would allow him to order wide-ranging remedies aimed at curbing alleged harms to young users.
‘A NEW STANDARD’ OR ‘MISGUIDED STRATEGY’?
Torrez’s office is expected to seek both billions of dollars more in damages and an order requiring Meta to make substantial changes to its platforms for New Mexico users, including adding age verification; redesigning its algorithm to promote quality content for minors; and ending autoplay and infinite scroll for minors, according to court filings.
Meta has said it has taken extensive measures to ensure its young users are safe.
New Mexico’s case is among thousands of lawsuits accusing Meta and other social media companies of intentionally designing products to be addictive to young people, leading to a nationwide mental health crisis.
Meta warned investors last week that legal and regulatory blowback in the European Union and the U.S. “could significantly impact our business and financial results,” after years of mounting criticism about children’s safety on social media.
Torrez told reporters in a press conference ahead of the trial that his hope is that the case will “set a new standard, not only in the state of New Mexico but nationally and potentially globally, for a new set of expectations for how social media companies are expected to conduct themselves.”
The company said in court filings before the trial that there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that social media has caused mental health problems and that many of the changes Torrez is seeking will be impossible to implement and could force the company to leave the state altogether.
“The New Mexico Attorney General’s focus on a single platform is a misguided strategy that ignores the hundreds of other apps teens use daily,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement ahead of the trial.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, David Gregorio and Bill Berkrot)
Comments