Meta ruled a "public nuisance," ordered to pay $567 million

The $567 million is ordered to be placed into an abatement fund, the vast majority of which will go to treatment for the psychological harm the company, which owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been ruled to have caused to children and teens. $420 million is marked for treatment, with $33 million set for awareness and prevention, $90 million for screening and assessment, $15 million for referral, linkage and coordination, and $9 million for implementation, continuous quality improvement, and evaluation. 

The court also recognized the importance of figuring out who using the platforms were children and who were adults, though it recognized the practical limitations of this. The court rejected requests for age verification, writing in the decision that the state “cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age-verification purposes.” Subsequently, he ruled that the abatement fund, “while far from ideal or sufficient, is most appropriate.” 

Per the BBC, this is just one of thousands of cases that Meta is currently facing in the United States over similar issues. Though it received nearly $1 billion in fines in just one courtroom, the outlet reports that Meta posted $61 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone.