Meta’s threat to quit New Mexico ‘is showing the world how little it cares about child safety,’ AG says

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez requested preliminary injunction against him Meta today we are seeking sweeping court-ordered changes to the way the company operates operates platforms aimed at children. Meta responded by threatening to pull Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp out of the state entirely.

“Meta is showing the world how little attention it cares about child safety,” Torrez said Thursday. “Meta’s refusal to comply with the laws that protect our children tells you everything you need to know about the character of this company and its leaders.”

Meta responded to Torrez’s statement on Thursday, ahead of a court hearing that begins May 4.

“Despite Attorney General Torrez’s assertions, the State’s demands are technically impractical and impossible for any company to meet and ignore the realities of the internet,” the company said in a statement. Luck. “The government targets a single platform while ignoring hundreds of other apps young people use, leaving parents without the comprehensive support they deserve.”

“While it is not in Meta’s best interest to do so, if a workable resolution to Attorney General Torrez’s requests cannot be reached, we may have no choice but to completely remove access to our platforms for users in New Mexico.”

Torrez dismissed the threat as a “public relations stunt” and said Meta’s argument about technical proficiency was not valid: “For years, the company has rewritten its own rules, redesigned its products, and even bowed to the demands of dictators to maintain market access. This is not about technological proficiency. Meta simply said, safety of children before engagementadvertising revenue and profit.

A covert operation

This week’s confrontation is the latest chapter in a case that began with a fake teenage girl.

In 2023, investigators with the New Mexico Department of Justice created a social media profile pretending to be a 13-year-old boy and discovered that the account was almost immediately filled with images, messages, and targeted harassment. adults who want to abuse a child. No algorithm flagged the contact and no security system caught it, the researchers said.

The undercover operation became the basis of a lawsuit that accused Meta of making false or misleading statements about platform security, enabling the sexual exploitation of children through intentional design choices, and deliberately designing its apps to addict young users. New Mexico prosecutors used the state consumer protection law to pursue charges against the company under Section 230, a federal law that has long protected platforms from user-generated content.

In March 2026, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for 75,000 violations of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act and ordered the company to pay a $375 million fine, the maximum allowed under state law. New Mexico has become the first state in the nation to win a lawsuit against a major technology company for child endangerment.

During the six-week trial, Meta’s own internal documents showed employees Zuckerberg’s calculations. Decision to introduce end-to-end encryption on Facebook in 2019 By default, Messenger would impact the ability to detect and report approximately 7.5 million cases of child sexual abuse to law enforcement. A Meta researcher had flagged as many as 500,000 child abuse cases a day on Facebook and Instagram.

interim injunction

When the new trial begins on May 4, Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid will hear the state’s public nuisance claim and decide whether to grant injunctive relief that would fundamentally restructure Meta’s operation for users under 18 in the state.

In age verificationMeta will be required to block children under 13 from its platforms, delete their existing accounts and data, and link each minor’s account to a guardian account. To prevent abuse, adults who are not directly connected to a minor cannot send messages to that minor. Additionally, Meta will not be allowed to offer minor accounts to adult users or any adults found to have such accounts. involved in child sexual abuse They will face a permanent one-hit ban, preventing them from creating new accounts on the same device, IP address or phone number.

End-to-end encryption will be eliminated for users under 18. Recommendation algorithms for minors will need to optimize what the government calls “integrity” rather than participation. The state also calls for a ban on endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications during school and sleep hours, and a strict 90-hour monthly platform access limit for underage users.

Finally, the state is demanding the reinstatement of private accounts on the Meta platform and a court-appointed Child Safety Monitor, funded entirely by Meta, that will oversee compliance for at least five years. The watchdog will have the authority to investigate Meta’s internal systems, obtain confidential reports from Meta employees, and regularly publish public reports.

Meta’s defense

A Meta spokesperson pushed back on both the scope of the demands and the strategy behind the upcoming lawsuit: “The New Mexico Attorney General’s focus on a single platform is a misguided strategy that ignores hundreds of other apps that young people use every day. Rather than providing comprehensive protections, the state’s proposed mandates violate parental rights and stifle free speech for all New Mexicans. Regardless, we are committed to providing safe, age-appropriate experiences and have already instituted many of the protections the state seeks, including 13 safeguards last year.”

Meta sought to delay or stop the case altogether, seeking Section 230 immunity and a subsequent postponement of the trial, but the court denied these requests each time.

More than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta over child safety issues. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1998 and has not been meaningfully updated, despite the FTC promising a revamped COPPA 2.0. Federal legislation regarding the platform Responsibility for minors, age verification, and addictive algorithms have repeatedly stalled.

This story first appeared on: Fortune.com