Liberty News

US Chief District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a New Mexico abatement fund. He refused to overtly order age verification across Facebook and Instagram. But then he ordered a narrower version of it, aimed at the accounts Meta's own systems predict belong to children under 13, which would ultimately lead to age verification anyway.

New Mexico Attorney General Raoul Torrez sued Meta and Mark Zuckerberg in 2023, alleging that the company failed to protect children from abuse, online solicitation and human trafficking. This legal action was addressed in two trials:

A Santa Fe jury in March found 75,000 violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act and imposed $375 million in civil penalties , the maximum state law allows. The jury determined that the company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Now a second, bench asked whether the platforms are a public nuisance, and Biedscheid concluded that they are a significant contributing cause of the teen mental health crisis in New Mexico.

Torrez had asked the court to require Meta to apply various age-verification tools on its platforms , accurate to 99%, enough to keep under-13s off the apps entirely.

Because of the COPPA Rule, it is the Court's conclusion that it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age-verification purposes, Biedscheid wrote. But how would Meta know that an account belongs to someone under 13 without at the very least passively tracking them, what they write, say, and do?

What Biedscheid did order on age came from Meta. He adopted the company's own proposed relief, calling it far from ideal or sufficient and, all the same, most appropriate. Meta must keep improving its age assurance models in New Mexico using AI tools, and must attempt within two years to build a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model. Where it cannot estimate a precise age, it must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until they verify. And verify here likely means adults have to show ID to speak online, even though Judge Biedscheid said he wasn't mandating that.

Meta must also delete the personal information it has already collected on under-13s, and build a portal with schools or a child safety organization for flagging suspected underage accounts.

The money will be paid over five years, with $420 million of it going to treatment and the rest to awareness, prevention, screening, referral and evaluation. It comes on top of the March penalties.

 

Comment: The Meta Settlement: What It Means for Your Speech and Privacy

Under the teen safety provisions is a court-supervised identity system for every Facebook and Instagram user.

See article from reclaimthenet.org

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has once again spoken out against what he sees as France's unjust and politically motivated prosecution of him and his company. He said in a statement:

Two years ago, I was detained in Paris by police for 3 days -- the longest they can hold someone before charging them.

In an unprecedented move, French authorities accused the head of a major platform of crimes committed by its users.

That investigation is still ongoing, although it makes less sense with each passing year.

Why?

Because we now have extensive evidence that Telegram was neither worse than other popular platforms at moderation, nor the worst at cooperating with authorities.

So why was Telegram singled out?

Over the last two years, we have seen a pattern emerge in multiple countries: Telegram is quietly asked to grant political favors -- such as illegal censorship or surveillance. When we refuse, local media and non-governmental organizations launch orchestrated campaigns portraying Telegram as a cesspool of crime, from child pornography to terrorism.

Our moderation is no worse than that of other major platforms. Yet these campaigns instill the idea that Telegram should be persecuted or restricted.

Suddenly, officials start caring about crime and protecting children -- but only on platforms that reject their secret political demands. Platforms that accept such deals get away with almost anything -- including literally selling ads promoting child pornography.

Is the French investigation against me political? It certainly fits the pattern we see elsewhere, mostly in authoritarian countries. And it definitely raises questions.

In time, this investigation may itself be investigated -- especially now that Macron's war against free speech is facing pushback. This month, France's Constitutional Council struck down his social media ban for children under 15 on freedom-of-expression grounds.

In the end, freedom and truth will prevail

Ireland's government is preparing to require citizens to use a state-controlled digital wallet app to access social media platforms and adult websites, even as its own departments continue to suffer repeated data breaches.

The app, being developed by the governments chief information officer, will hold key personal identifiers such as a persons Public Services Card and drivers license, and could later include other credentials like a TV license.

Under the proposal, social media companies will be required to use this government system to verify the age of users before granting access to their platforms.

Surveillance Minister Patrick ODonovan described the plan as a necessary step to address what he called the severe public health issue of children viewing inappropriate material online. He said that hose who refuse to use the app would lose access to their social media accounts and to websites listed on a government age-restricted schedule.

However the Irish government's own of protecting personal information remains poor. Figures released by the Department of Defence show that 31 data breaches occurred in 2025, though only two were serious enough to be reported to the Data Protection Commission (DPC).