A New Mexico judge just turned a massive fine into a full-blown operational mandate. Meta must now pay an additional $567 million—stacked on top of the $375 million it was already ordered to pay in March—bringing the total penalty to $942 million. But the money might be the easy part.
The ruling forces Meta to physically alter how Instagram and Facebook work for users under 18 in the state. We’re talking about stripping away Like counts entirely unless a parent approves them. Push notifications go silent between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. And there’s a hard cap: 90 hours of usage per month, which shakes out to roughly three hours a day. These aren’t suggestions buried in a settings menu; they’re court-ordered product changes.
Judge’s language was blunt. The order states that “significant numbers of people in New Mexico experience harm from Meta’s products due to risks of sexual exploitation, interference with education, and adverse mental health outcomes.” He called the platform’s impact a “public nuisance” that Meta is legally required to abate. While acknowledging other platforms share blame, the court made it clear it sees Meta’s role as uniquely corrosive. Attorney General Raúl Torrez didn’t hold back either, saying the company “chose engagement and profit over their safety.”
Meta, predictably, is appealing. Spokesperson Andy Stone said the company works hard to keep people safe and believes the claims “misrepresent the facts.” But this is now the second major blow in quick succession—a Los Angeles court also ruled against the company in March over addictive design patterns. With a consolidated lawsuit from 33 states sitting in an Oakland federal court and individual actions from states like Tennessee, the New Mexico judgment isn’t an isolated event. It’s a blueprint. Other courts now have a concrete model for not just fining a platform, but dictating how the product itself must function within their borders. That’s the precedent that should make Meta’s legal team lose sleep.
