In new filings, attorneys for social media giant Meta said the company would consider pulling the plug on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram in the state of New Mexico if a judge were to side with the state’s Department of Justice in a bench trial scheduled to start on Monday.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez during a virtual news conference Thursday dismissed Meta’s warning as a “PR stunt” and said the office will continue to pursue judicial efforts to have the company change how it operates for underage users.
“Meta has a choice, obviously, and the responsible choice and the ethical choice, and frankly, the smart business move, is for them to just go ahead and start doing the hard work of making this a safer product,” Torrez said.
It’s the latest escalation in the legal battle between the state’s top prosecutor and Meta over issues of teen safety.
In December 2023, Torrez sued Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging the company’s platforms harmed children’s mental health and exposed them to sexual exploitation.
A Santa Fe jury in March found that Meta had willfully violated New Mexico’s consumer protection laws and ordered the social media giant to pay $375 million in damages to the state. Meta has said it will appeal the verdict.
During the bench trial starting Monday before a state district judge in Santa Fe, the NMDOJ will argue that Meta’s activities constitute a public nuisance and will ask the court for financial penalties and to “fundamentally restructure how Meta operates for children.”
According to court documents, those modifications would include banning infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications during school and sleep hours, along with capping access for New Mexico children on Meta platforms to 90 hours per month.
Meta’s response, which was originally filed under seal but made public on April 29, claims the state’s demands are “so broad and burdensome, that if implemented it might force Meta to withdraw its apps entirely” from New Mexico.
“It does not make economic or engineering sense for Meta to build separate apps just for New Mexico residents,” the company said in its response. Additionally, attorneys argued that New Mexico has no authority to implement the requested changes to the platforms, and that doing so violates free speech on the platforms. The company also noted that it has made changes to its platform that render New Mexico’s demands as unnecessary.
In a written statement provided to Source NM, a Meta spokesperson called the state’s demands “technically impractical,” and “impossible for any company to meet,” saying the proposed changes “disregard the realities of the internet.”
“While it is not in Meta’s interests to do so, if a workable solution to Attorney General Torrez’s demands is not reached, we may have no choice but to remove access to its platforms for users in New Mexico entirely,” the statement concluded.
