Attorneys for New Mexico and Meta made opening statements Monday in the state’s trial accusing the social media giant of failing to protect children on Facebook and Instagram from sexual exploitation.
“We believe the evidence in this case is that Meta made its profits, while publicly misrepresenting that its platforms were safe for youth, downplaying or outright lying about what it knows about the dangers of its platforms,” attorney Don Migliori, who is representing New Mexico, said in a First Judicial District courtroom in Santa Fe.
Former Meta officials who raised alarms about the company’s practices as well as child welfare experts are slated to testify over the next several weeks, Migliori said.
Meta, in public statements and in court filings, has denied the allegations. During opening arguments, Kevin Huff, one of the attorneys representing Meta, said the company has been open about the limitations of its safeguards, issues reports about the frequency of child sexual abuse material and other harmful material on its platforms and has worked to remove it from the apps.
“Meta disclosed the risks to the public,” Huff said. “It didn’t deceive anyone.”
Monday marked the beginning of what’s expected to be a seven-week civil trial over whether Meta violated New Mexico’s consumer protection laws and misled the public about the safety of its platforms for young users’ mental health and risk levels of sexual exploitation. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez first brought the civil suit against Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2023.
Huff argued Monday the state will not be able to prove that Meta has the sole responsibility for keeping harmful content from users.
“Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to be fun and entertaining, not to harm teens or anyone else,” Huff said.
In a news conference outside the courtroom Monday, Torrez said if the jury sides with the state and finds the company liable, “financial penalties could be in the billions of dollars.” That could also mean orders from the judge to change how the site operates.
“If we can win in this action and force them to make their product safer in this state, it changes the narrative completely about what they say is possible for everyone else,” said Attorney General Raúl Torrez.
He said the most weighty evidence the state will present is internal discussions and memos, citing newly unsealed findings that Meta researchers were predicting that “on the order of half a million instances of child exploitation per day.”
“They want to accuse the state of cherry-picking specific facts and information, but some of the most damning information is going to be coming from inside Meta itself,” Torrez said. “Documents and communications that have been hidden from the public for years that have been buried by executives inside this company. It’s going to be those statements more than anything else that they can’t run from, that they can’t hide from.”
The New Mexico case will continue every Monday through Friday until, likely, the end of March, according to the court schedule.
Opening arguments also started Monday in a separate civil lawsuit in Los Angeles alleging that Meta, and YouTube platforms “engineered addiction,” in young users.
