Meta is on trial in New Mexico for facilitating child predation

At the heart of a subsequent social media liability case is a key question: Did Meta lie or mislead the public about the safety of its platform, when it knew something entirely different?

The state of New Mexico opened its case Monday arguing that public statements by Meta’s top executives regularly contradicted its internal discussions and research about the harm Facebook and Instagram are doing to teens. According to Don Migliori, the state’s attorney, Meta prioritized profits and her stated commitment to free speech at the expense of the safety of young users on Facebook and Instagram. Meanwhile, Meta’s attorney, Kevin Huff, told the New Mexico jury that Meta did not deceive anyone, and that the company regularly discloses potential risks to its services. These disclosures occur because a company can’t always immediately detect violations of its terms of service, Huff said. “This case is not about whether there is bad content on Facebook and Instagram,” Huff told the jury. Although terrible things can sometimes get past the platform’s guardrails, “the evidence will show that Meta told the truth.”

The case is one of two High-profile trials on social media liability, which began with opening arguments Monday. The other is taking place in state court in Los Angeles, where lawyers for the young plaintiff identified by the initials KGM claim that Meta and YouTube designed their products in ways that led to compulsive use, harming the mental health of their users. The Los Angeles trial is the first of several lawsuits against social media companies that are scheduled to take place in the same court, alleging similar harms to users.

The case in New Mexico, brought by state Attorney General Raul Torrez, also says Meta designed its products in ways that caused addiction. But this case additionally involved an investigation using fake accounts that allegedly lured child exploitation suspects to Meta’s services. According to the opening statement, three suspected child predators were arrested as a result of that sting.

A jury will have to decide whether Meta made false statements or deceived consumers about the potential harms of using Instagram or Facebook. In his opening remarks to the jury, Migliori repeatedly placed side-by-side slides that showed “what Metta said” and “what Mita knew.”

In slides detailing what Meta said, he showed statements from company executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying things like that children under 13 aren’t allowed on its platforms, or that users over 19 aren’t allowed to send private messages to teen accounts that don’t follow them. Next, Migliori will show slides that he said showed Meta knows the reality is different — for example, executives estimated there are 4 million accounts under the age of 13 on Instagram. In one 2018 email Zuckerberg sent to senior executives, the CEO wrote that he found it “unacceptable to subjugate freedom of expression in the way that ‘safety first’ delivery suggests,” and added: “Keeping people safe is the balance, not the point.”

After Migliori finished his opening statement, Huff urged jurors to give Meta a chance to present his case and not be “distracted by disturbing images.” Hof did not deny that there are some bad things on Facebook and Instagram, but he said that the company is upfront about it and is working on ways to mitigate it. “We hope that the state will partner with us, instead of suing us.”

The state plans to subpoena several former Meta employees, who, according to the state, will describe the company’s inadequate response to harmful behavior on its platforms. At least two former employees have testified before Congress: a former Facebook engineering director and an Instagram consultant Arturo Bejar And former meta-researcher Jason Satizahn. Hof specifically urged jurors to give Meta an opportunity to question Satzahn before they reached any conclusions about his credibility. He also reviewed Meta’s argument that what people might colloquially call social media addiction is a misnomer. Addiction to substances like fentanyl can cause physical effects such as withdrawal; Meta is supposed to argue that social media does not create physical dependency. “Facebook is not like fentanyl,” Huff said. “No one is going to overdose on Facebook. Scientific studies show that people don’t develop withdrawal symptoms when they stop using Facebook, like they would if they stopped using fentanyl.” The first witness to take the stand was an assistant principal who dealt with behavioral issues in students allegedly related to social media use.

Even before the trial began, Meta and the prosecutor’s office were publicly sparring. Meta spokesman Andy Stone recently published a long article Thread on X He accused Torrez of using the case for his own political gain, and described the investigation into the company as “morally compromised.” While Torrez accuses Meta of putting profits over children’s safety, Stone accuses Torrez of choosing “a political victory for self-promotion over children’s safety.” to forbid books That Torrez’s office used photos of real children without consent for the fake profiles they created as “bait” for child predators on meta platforms. The district attorney’s office used “old” accounts that Stone said were “often hacked accounts that are resold on illicit markets,” he said. You will pollute Any evidence “because these are real accounts with real histories and behave in certain ways.”

“Instead of making its products safer, Meta spends its time and resources discrediting law enforcement officials who put child predators behind bars,” New Mexico Department of Justice Deputy Director of Communications Chelsea Petforic said in a statement in response to Stone’s post. “The company is distracting from New Mexico’s undercover investigation because even Meta’s highest-paid public relations staff can’t make a case for why Meta’s platforms expose children to criminals. Our lawsuit alleges that Meta has misled the public about the dangers of its platforms for years, and we are not surprised to see the company continue to make blatantly false statements during our trial. We look forward to presenting the evidence we obtained during more than two years of litigation to a jury.”