Meta is basically threatening to take its ball and go home after a New Mexico jury found the company liable for harms against children facilitated via its social media platforms.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it may block access to its apps in New Mexico rather than make changes to get in compliance with the state’s Unfair Practices Act. According to The Hill, Meta’s threat came via a court filing that was submitted days before next week’s proceedings begin in the trial’s second phase, in which a judge will review New Mexico’s demands that Meta make its platforms safer for children.
In a court filing shared with The Hill, Meta said the state of New Mexico’s demands for the company are “in many cases technologically impractical or completely impossible.” The parent company of Instagram and Facebook said the demands would “essentially require” the company to build apps specific to New Mexico.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez disputed Meta’s filing, saying the tech company “is showing the world how little it cares about child safety.”
“For years the company has rewritten its own rules, redesigned its products, and even bent to the demands of dictators to preserve market access,” Torrez said in a statement. “This is not about technological capability.”
Last year, a Meta whistleblower told Congress the company had developed censorship technology as part of its ultimately unsuccessful effort to enter the Chinese market, testimony that a Meta spokesperson dismissed as “divorced from reality.”
Torrez’s statement said New Mexico’s demands include the following:
• Effective age verification to prevent adults from posing as minors, ensure that all teens receive appropriate safeguards, and enforce minimum age requirements for pre-teens;
• Safer recommendation algorithms that do not prioritize engagement over child well-being;
• Restrictions on end-to-end encryption for minors to prevent predators from operating in secrecy;
• Prominent warning labels about platform risks;
• Permanent bans for adults who engage in or facilitate child exploitation; and
• Independent oversight through a court-appointed child safety monitor.
You can be the judge as to whether any of those things seem “impossible” for a highly profitable company such as Meta, which comports itself as being on the cutting edge of technology.
The Hill’s report said Meta’s filing cited demands the company “detect at least 99 percent of all new CSAM [child sexual abuse material]” and also remove its “infinite scroll” feature, which some psychology experts have decried for helping fuel social media addiction among children.
According to The Hill, Meta also “cited the order to limit users’ access to Meta’s apps, arguing it could leave teens unable to communicate with their parents.”
I’m not sure that will withstand scrutiny, given the innumerable ways throughout history that teens have managed to contact their parents sans Meta. But that assertion seems rather indicative of Meta’s desire to undercut the historic New Mexico court ruling.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.