Meta’s historic loss in court could cost a lot more than $375 million

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Policy Close Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Policy Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Tech Law Close Law Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Follow Follow See All Law Meta’s historic loss in court could cost a lot more than $375 million In the second phase of trial, the state will argue for changes to Meta’s business. In the second phase of trial, the state will argue for changes to Meta’s business. by Lauren Feiner Close Lauren Feiner Senior Policy Reporter Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

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Follow Follow See All by Lauren Feiner May 2, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC Link Share Gift Mark Zuckerberg. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Part Of Social media on trial: tech giants face lawsuits over addiction, safety, and mental health see all updates Lauren Feiner Close Lauren Feiner Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Lauren Feiner is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill.

She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez won a historic sum of $375 million in a landmark child safety case against Meta earlier this year. But the next stage of the fight could be even more consequential for Meta and the social media industry at large.

Beginning Monday, attorneys for Meta and New Mexico will return to a Santa Fe courthouse for a three-week public nuisance trial, where they’ll argue over the changes the AG wants the judge to order Meta make to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those changes include adding age verification for New Mexico users, prohibiting end-to-end encryption for users under 18 and capping their use to 90 hours per month, limiting engagement-boosting features like infinite scroll and autoplay, and requiring Meta to detect 99 percent of new child sexual abuse material (CSAM). “From the outset, our goal was to try and change the way the company’s doing business,” Torrez told The Verge on a recent visit to Washington, DC, to advocate for new kids safety legislation.

“I recognize that even at $375 million for a company this big and this profitable, it’s not enough in and of itself to change the way they’re doing business. In fact, there’s probably some folks in that company who think of it as the cost of doing business.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.