Meta says it may be forced to pull Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico if the attorney general gets his way. The state is demanding a host of changes that the company says are impossible to achieve.
After winning a $375 million jury award against Meta in a trial that argued the company misled users in the state about the safety of its products, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is asking the state court to order sweeping changes to the platforms. Among the asks are a prohibition on end-to-end encryption for minors, implementing age verification, and detecting 99 percent of new child sexual abuse material uploaded to its services.
“Fundamentally, many of the requests are so hopelessly vague or ambiguous”
“Fundamentally, many of the requests are so hopelessly vague or ambiguous that enforcing them would violate Meta’s due process rights to know what would, and what would not, violate the injunction,” Meta says in a filing to the court. It calls several requests “technologically or practically infeasible” and says it would need to build New Mexico-specific apps to comply. “Therefore, granting this onerous relief could compel Meta to entirely withdraw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from the State as the only feasible means of compliance.”
A couple examples of the AG’s proposed impossible tasks, according to Meta, are the mandates it achieve a 99 percent accuracy rate for detecting new CSAM and rejecting underage accounts. No matter what threshold the state set for CSAM detection, the company writes in the filing, “Meta would never be able to prove that the system met that standard, because doing the calculation would require that Meta detect 100% of CSAM to use as the denominator.” Demanding a specific level of accuracy in detection “appears to be based on the false premise that any system or tool can rid any social application or website with billions of users of all abuse or all CSAM. CSAM is an internet-wide issue not unique to Meta’s platforms, and no social application or website has been able to achieve zero CSAM, as multiple State witnesses conceded,” Meta adds.
It also claims that replacing Meta’s existing age estimation methods — which include asking for users’ birthdays at sign-up, building in protections in case users try to change their age, and using models that predict age — with more onerous ones like ID uploads and facial scans for a large population could be less accurate. That’s because, according to Meta, they’d likely result in efforts to circumvent the system, or work differently in real-world conditions than in test cases. Plus, Meta believes it would be barred by federal children’s privacy law from retaining the data necessary to classify users under 13 in the state.
“Meta’s refusal to follow the laws that protect our kids tells you everything you need to know about this company”
Torrez says in a statement that Meta’s resistance to his proposed changes simply shows its lack of willingness. “Meta’s refusal to follow the laws that protect our kids tells you everything you need to know about this company and the character of its leaders,” Torrez says. “We know Meta has the ability to make these changes. For years the company has rewritten its own rules, redesigned its products, and even bent to the demands of dictators to preserve market access. This is not about technological capability. Meta simply refuses to place the safety of children ahead of engagement, advertising revenue, and profit.”
Meta claims recent features like Teen Accounts already address many of New Mexico’s concerns, and proposes far more modest changes to tweak its age assurance models and fund law enforcement training in the state for internet crimes against children for a limited time.
“In targeting a single platform, the State ignores the hundreds of other apps teens use, leaving parents without the comprehensive support they actually deserve,” Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro says in a statement.
Torrez warns that even if Meta were to “take their ball and leave the state,” it may soon find fewer places in the US to go. On a call with reporters Thursday, Torrez noted that dozens of AGs around the country are pursuing similar actions against social media companies. “It feels, to me, like a shortsighted and temporary attempt to deflect and delay the inevitable,” he says. “And it would be better for them, it would be better for our community, but [also] communities all over the country if they just started to do the real work to prioritize safety.”