tristanj
today at 12:51 AM
Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]:
A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either:
- A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or
- B. interferes with the exercise and enjoyment of public rights, including the right to use public property.
Whoever commits a public nuisance for which the act or penalty is not otherwise prescribed by law is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement. The judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund to abate the harm done.
[0] https://www.kob.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/D-101-CV-2023...
[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/chapter-30/article-8...
matt123456789
today at 2:02 AM
The "without lawful authority" condition will result in this being vacated upon appeal. Meta isn't a public nuisance any more than Philip Morris. Both are regulated already, both produce addictive products, both are optional.
The level of regulation applied to Meta is very different from Philip Morris.
pessimizer
today at 2:30 AM
This dumb lawfare is a safety valve to allow them to continue not to regulate. Just like the under-18 bans are also an excuse not to regulate (and to root everyone's computer.) Somehow the evil algorithms become fine the day people turn 18, so all they have to do to comply is check. It's individuals' responsibility to make it easy for them.
These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?
The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.
mapontosevenths
today at 4:38 AM
> The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun.
That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
safety1st
today at 4:16 AM
One third of porn consumers are women. They are hardly immune.
somenameforme
today at 4:41 AM
This didn't pass the sniff test for me, and I think this [1] goes some way to explaining why it's misleading. They get into the issue of frequency - women very rarely, men - goons locked and loaded. So if you look at a monthly survey, about 1 in 3 women say yes even though it was probably just 1 'experience' for that month as opposed to many for an average man.
In other words we intuit that figure as meaning female_views/total_views = 33% when in reality that number would likely be low single digits. If you count men who identify as women, as men, then the number's going to go even lower. And I expect a significant chunk of the small remaining group are going to be from couples experimenting together, at the man's behest.
[1] - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5180/are-one-in...
sublinear
today at 4:58 AM
Nobody is surprised by the misogyny of your reply or early 2010s stackexchange.
"Playboy magazines" are part of the problem.
Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.
Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
somenameforme
today at 4:17 AM
Sex education is, outside of some places in Europe, very rare. You'll certainly find such things far and few between in Asia. So not only is it absent in non-Christian nations, but the places where it is present, like Scandiland for ex, tend to be Christian.
Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex. And so anybody taking any sort of que from there, whatsoever, has no clue what normal sex or normal relations look like.
socalgal2
today at 4:53 AM
It doesn't require porn. Most movies, tv shows, rom-coms or dramas, have "unrealistic" depictions of "normal" relationships.
>Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex.
Maybe, but none of that is germane to the subject at hand.
It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn, and to teach them about sex and normal relations. Removing porn doesn't solve that problem because again the problem isn't the porn, it's the fact that porn is serving a role in educating people that society refuses to.
> The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy
The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
> Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids,
There is no reason this has to be true.
>The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
I don't know, probably.
>There is no reason this has to be true.
The incessant need of moralists and God-botherers to purge society of anything they deem immoral is the reason. You give these people an inch and and a legal pretext and they take a mile.
donkey_brains
today at 3:37 AM
“ we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.”
Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?
Lol I have never met someone in my adult life in the usa who was strictly for abstinence before marriage. You are extremely overstating the taboo of it here.
iammrpayments
today at 4:41 AM
“Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender “*kids*”
What?
Read all the words. I know it's Hacker News and that's asking for a lot of emotional maturity in a thread like this but I believe in you.
The first two videos listed on PornHub.com are "FUCK THE CONDOM! Skinny Blonde Girl Opens HER LITTLE ASSHOLE FOR MY BIG COCK" and "2 Friends Want to Try an African Dick in the Ass for the First Time While They're Pissed On and Humiliated."
The First Amendment makes this kind of stuff borderline impossible to regulate in the US, but it's pretty obvious that this stuff is harmful to people's brains and that society would be better off it was not available to people (especially minors).
Why are sites about women's health issues posting porn, exactly?
Huge blind spot to think that content only affects men’s view of intimacy and sexual relations
Explain that one for the class
Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it
To be clear, you want me to articulate a point that you fabricated and then attributed to me? I think I’m going to pass, but feel free to continue the discussion with yourself about things I didn’t say.
Psst, he didn’t reply to you. He replied to the person that replied to you.
to clarify, you're suggesting I introduced a strawman argument because your focus on men wasn't mean to exclude anyone else?
that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
drivebyhooting
today at 4:45 AM
How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict?
If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?
usernametaken29
today at 3:15 AM
This assumes parents aren’t doing their job. As a young kid you don’t have a choice. Social pressure to participate in social media is intense. Either you’re constantly online or you’re out.
Though luck being a parent policing this, you’ll only make things worse for your kid and your own. Only a mandated curfew can help.
fivetenpen
today at 1:28 AM
Yes they should, but guess what they’re doing instead?
Scrolling.
Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.
Every porn site that makes money off harm to minors? Yes, and sometimes they are taken down.
crowcroft
today at 1:49 AM
I think this is a general misunderstanding of how common law legal systems work.
The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence.
I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...
Ah yes, the good old "cigarettes and alcohol should be freely available to kids" lobby logic, like it's the 60s and 70s again.
consensus1
today at 3:02 AM
Cigarettes and alcohol are freely available to kids
bluefirebrand
today at 3:19 AM
Not really
Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"
popalchemist
today at 1:33 AM
They actively spent hundreds of millions of dollars deliberately creating chatbots that would engage in sex acts with minors. It was known to Zuckerberg and approved by him explicitly. That isn't a parenting issue, that is predation at scale.
skeledrew
today at 2:18 AM
However you put it, the parent (if around) is the closest and most frequent point of contact for any child. A parent doing an OK job would be a reliable resource whom the child can approach with any questions arising from weird "discoveries" online or even in the community. A parent doing a splendid job would proactively educate their child about the world and it's messiness so said child is equipped to confidently handle much of what pops up. A child should be able to recognize and avoid predation when they encounter it.
dijksterhuis
today at 3:01 AM
you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..."
Agreed. It's the same "where were the parents!" shouting, just phrased differently.
No, society is allowed to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Acting like trillion dollar corporations do not have a massive influence on American society is borderline mush for brains here.
You basically don't want to punish American corporations, which is just frankly odd. American corporations are some of the most destructive and anti-human organizations on the planet. Being pro-corporation means you have anti-human sentiments, and frankly what are yours? That you think people with poor constitutions or mental acuity deserve to feel mental anguish? Like what is it, just say it and save us time.
Anyone that fights back against a corporation is always seen as a hero for good reason.
techblueberry
today at 1:28 AM
> Should every porn site be taken down?
I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy, but probably yes?
I’m curious the moral basis for which you have appointed yourself more qualified than the adult viewers themselves about what adults should be able to view in their web browser.
techblueberry
today at 1:50 AM
I find it amusing that you think that anyone trying to declare themselves an authority does so on a moral basis.
homeonthemtn
today at 1:34 AM
Yes. It's ok to say no to porn and gore. I'm tired of acting like we need it to survive otherwise some dystopian genie will be unleashed. Get rid of that shit.
musicjerm
today at 3:28 AM
I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society. I think the hard part here is actually getting rid of it. I think what will end up happening is it moves to a darker part of the web and is completely unregulated. Just look at what happened in the US with illegal drugs. They didn’t just go away, and now we have less safe drugs pretty much freely available laced with fentanyl and other harmful or deadly substances. I know this isn’t exactly the same situation but we should consider what might happen when making something “illegal”.
> I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society.
Speak for yourself. The science of it seems to be a mixed bag with definite pros and cons.
You're talking about something that is also intrinsic to humanity. It takes no resources. Good luck with that.
You are of course free to not view it. Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? How do you know better than they do, what they should or should not be viewing?
JKCalhoun
today at 2:33 AM
As I got older I began to recognize that some things are just bad for society at large.
My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.
qotgalaxy
today at 1:53 AM
[dead]
techblueberry
today at 1:53 AM
> Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view?
Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us.
Why wouldn’t I think I should decide for others?
judge2020
today at 12:55 AM
Is there also a sort-of injunction to stop doing x y z? Or is just existing as a social media company a public nuisance?
From the article:
The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.
For users under 18, Meta will eliminate push notifications during night time (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM) on all days; and from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on school days during the academic year. They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
TBH, these restrictions will just push kids to use Snapchat.
ElProlactin
today at 1:13 AM
> They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
When you consider that the average person is awake for somewhere between 450 and 500 hours per month, 90 hours still represents ~20% of waking time.
For comparison, a K-12 student spends 110-140 hours per month at school. So this is still a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be spending on social media, teen or adult.
judge2020
today at 1:53 AM
The problem is, what if one of these apps is being used as a messaging app? Hardly social media if most of your usage is just using it to DM friends/family, a la texting.
Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach, but it's hard, and the government can't mandate parents take the correct approach when it's so high-friction.
skeledrew
today at 2:22 AM
Lots of messaging apps out there. No need to use one that's connected to a toxic platform.
> The problem is, what if one of these apps is being used as a messaging app?
How is this a problem? We've had messaging apps 24/7 for 15 years. For many millenia we didn't have them, and it was hardly ever a problem.