The penalty is in addition to $375m that Meta was ordered to pay in March as a result of a separate phase of the same court case.
Social media and tech giant Meta has been fined $567m by a court in the US state of New Mexico, with the money to be used to address harms caused to young people by its Instagram and Facebook platforms.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid of Santa Fe also ordered various changes to the way Meta’s platforms operate for children using them in New Mexico after ruling yesterday (6 August) that the company had created a “public nuisance” in the state.
The $567m is to be paid into an “abatement fund” deemed by the court to be “necessary due to the wide-ranging impacts of the harm and the complex nature of the remedy”. The fund is broken into multiple categories, with $420m to go towards “treatment”, $90m to be spent on “screening and assessment”, and $33m allocated to “awareness and prevention”.
The fund is subject to a five-year lifespan as per the judge’s ruling.
