New Mexico ruling puts Meta on collision course with age assurance

Meta is feeling the regulatory pinch in New Mexico, where a judge has ordered the social media company to pay out $567 million on the grounds that its products are a “public nuisance” akin to air pollution, and the state attorney general is pushing for age assurance legislation.

A report from the BBC says that, in his 69-page ruling, New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, and declared “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated.”

The fine is in addition to the $375 million Meta is on the hook for after, in an earlier stage of the case, a March jury verdict found Meta liable for exposing children to online predators and other harms. That brings the firm’s total bill in New Mexico to $942 million.

According to Source NM, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has called the penalty “historic.” But he has also expressed frustration over outdated laws, noting that the state’s consumer protection law has not been updated since 1970. “Why does that matter? It matters because that statute was built for a totally different world,” Torrez says. “It was built for a totally different economy, and it didn’t conceive of or understand or anticipate companies of this size and scale, or the business practices that they engage in.”

His concerns are rooted in genuine legal roadblocks: for one, New Mexico’s Child’s Online Privacy Act of 1998 does not include the necessary statutes that would allow courts to order Meta to impose stricter age assurance measures. In his ruling, Judge Biedscheid writes that, because of the 1998 law, “it is the Court’s conclusion that it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age-verification purposes.”

We’re going to need a bigger fine

In general, the case is a potent example of how society is shifting its views on social media and imposing legislation to correct the harms it has wrought. But it also illustrates two hard truths that will make lasting change difficult.

The first is that even massive fines are a questionably effective tool for censuring a company for which money is no object. Meta’s annual profit for 2025 tallied about $60 billion. Per coverage by the Associated Press, “investors seemed to shrug off the New Mexico ruling in after-hours trading Thursday, sending Meta’s stock down less than half a percent to $589.44.”

As such, barring a penalty of $50 billion and up, fines mainly serve as warnings to the company, rather than serious operational obstacles.

Meta disagrees with courts, public

The second evident truth is that Meta will never concede wrongdoing. It has spent enormous amounts of money and time fighting laws that put biometric age assurance requirements on its platform, rejecting regulatory fines, and lobbying for age checks to be placed (and liability to be assumed) at the app store level. It continues to suggest that literacy is the best solution for protecting children.

In keeping, a spokesperson for Meta says the company disagrees with the latest ruling in New Mexico, and will appeal.

“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content,” the company says. “We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.”

The company is also appealing the earlier $375 million fine. Torrez himself has acknowledged that the process could take “months, if not years” to play out.

It has been clear for years that Meta aims to be the one to determine what counts as fact. Whether in the role its publishing of misinformation and disinformation has had in destabilizing democratic politics and polarizing societies, in its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s swallowing of whole neighbourhoods to suit his whims, or in its present insistence that everyone is wrong about how it harms kids, Meta has assumed the role of an infallible entity: too big and powerful to ever be wrong.

As such, comments by Attorney General Torrez, suggesting that the fines show how “companies of this size and scale can actually be held accountable,” are missing a key piece for true accountability. Practically, Meta conducts itself as if it operates above the law.

Smokes, pills, social media get public nuisance tag

The declaration of Meta’s products as a public nuisance marks a first – and that semantic distinction could help move the needle. Much of Meta’s argument relies on the assumption that it also has positive impacts on society. As tobacco companies once claimed that smoking helps kids connect, Meta insists its platforms are an important space for marginalized individuals to find community. A formal label identifying Meta as a net negative on society could help shift public opinion; the public nuisance label has previously been applied to companies that sold or marketed tobacco and opioids.

Another tool to help actually hold platforms accountable is effective age verification technology. New Mexico’s lawsuit included calls for stronger age assurance requirements. While judge Biedscheid calls age assurance tools “unproven technology,” Torrez says the ruling is “an opportunity to rely on and incorporate rapidly advancing and evolving technology into a proposed legislative solution.” His office aims to present the idea to the New Mexico Legislature in the coming weeks.

Unlike fines, age checks confront users at the point of access, thereby sending a signal that what’s inside has the potential to be unsafe for vulnerable individuals. Rather than a privately owned public space that is open to all, Meta becomes a private club with bouncers at the door, to keep underage patrons away from the shady dealings happening inside.

That, more than any statistical falloff or slump in earnings, may be what frightens Meta the most about age checks. Once a product has been age restricted, it carries with it the whiff of vice – and will have a much harder time selling the idea that it exists for the public good.

That matters enormously to Meta, as it faces what Torrez calls “growing discontentment from social media users about the outsized role companies like Meta play in influencing policy and daily life.”

A blueprint for regulation

The New Mexico judgment may ultimately be remembered less for the size of the penalty than for the legal principles it establishes. By treating social media harms as a public nuisance and linking child safety to stronger age assurance, the case offers regulators a blueprint that other jurisdictions could follow.

Another major trial begins next week in California, where 29 states allege Meta illegally collected children’s data, designed its platforms to addict young users and misled consumers about the risks. At the same time, jurisdictions around the world are moving toward stronger age assurance and age restrictions for social media. If those legal and regulatory efforts continue to converge, the cumulative effect of litigation, legislation and age assurance requirements may prove far more consequential than any single fine.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Facebook  |  Meta  |  New Mexico  |  regulation  |  social media