$943.2 million. That’s the amount that Meta must pay for failing to protect kids on their platforms.
Last week, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund for teen mental health prevention and treatment. This amount is in addition to the $372 million they were ordered to pay earlier this year after a jury found they were liable for enabling sexual exploitation and misleading users. The company was declared a “public nuisance” by a New Mexico judge, likened to air pollution.
2026 has seen many victorious outcomes for plaintiffs suing social media companies for their harms. Earlier this year, a separate trial in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube liable for their platforms’ roles in addicting and harming a young girl. Both were ordered to pay a total of $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages, 70% by Meta and 30% by YouTube. Snap and TikTok settled with the plaintiff prior to trial.
There are currently thousands of lawsuits against social media companies for harming users pending across the country, mostly concentrated in California. And Big Tech’s efforts to appeal or delay these cases have so far been rejected. Just days after the New Mexico ruling, Meta and TikTok’s attempt to dodge thousands of cases was denied by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.
All of this begs the question: Have social media companies finally reached their day of reckoning?
Read on for an update on where all these cases stand and Big Tech’s recent losses.
This is Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment… And We’re Not Done.
The New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez successfully sued Meta for child sexual exploitation with a liable verdict rendered earlier this year. As a result of the judge’s ruling last week, Meta will now have to pay close to $1 billion for causing harms to users related to the New Mexico case. Plus, there are still thousands of pending lawsuits against Meta and other social media companies in regard to user safety.
On August 10, 2026, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed thousands of lawsuits against Meta, Alphabet (Google), ByteDance (TikTok), Snap (Snapchat), and other social media platforms, to move forward. Meta and TikTok had appealed a lower court’s decision that they must face these lawsuits, arguing that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunized them from being sued. However, the appeals court said that Section 230 does not provide immunity from the lawsuits—it simply provides a defense the companies can use to argue against being held liable. This is a very positive decision as Section 230 is often misinterpreted by judges to mean lawsuits can’t even be brought in the first place. In other words, plaintiffs’ lawsuits are thrown out before they can even get started.
But now, thanks to this decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the social media companies must face thousands of lawsuits and go to trial. They will only be allowed to appeal after the court has decided whether or not the companies are liable.
In addition to this ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Meta’s bid to delay a trial involving claims brought by 29 state attorneys general. The state attorneys general alleged that Meta illegally collected and used children’s data, designed its platforms to be addictive to children, and misled users about the safety of its platforms.
The Struggle to Overcome the Protections of Section 230
In past years, social media companies have enjoyed the overblown protections of a law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This is a law that has been repeatedly misinterpreted by courts as immunizing Big Tech from being sued when their platforms cause harms to users. But now, Section 230 is proving not to be as bulletproof as many tech executives once thought.
As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision showed, Section 230 does not immunize tech companies from being sued—it provides a liability defense, but they still must face the lawsuit.
Further, Section 230’s liability defense was only supposed to apply to third party content hosted on the platform. Lawyers for victims and survivors are arguing that it’s not only the content on social media platforms that causes harm to users—it’s the platforms’ design features.
For example, cases have elevated social media platforms’ inherently addictive design with endless scrolling, their beauty filters that the companies knew caused teenage eating disorders, their lack of age verification, and more. There has been an abundance of evidence that the companies knew precisely how harmful these features were but chose to bury their internal research showing the negative impacts. The companies did this so that they could continue reaping maximum profits from addictive and exploitative features.
While plaintiffs are waging these battles in the courts, Congress must also step in and provide clarity. Section 230 has caused confusion and harm for too long, resulting in countless victims’ lawsuits being thrown out. It’s time to Sunset Section 230, so Congress can replace it with better, clearer language!
