Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-jury-deliberation

Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

A jury on Tuesday found Meta violated New Mexico law in a case accusing it of failing to warn users about the dangers of its platforms and protect children from sexual predators.

CNN

Many will cheer for any case that hurts Meta without reading the details, but we should be aware that these cases are one of the key reasons why companies are backtracking from features like end-to-end encryption:

> The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats — a privacy measure that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a conversation — could make it harder for law enforcement to catch predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year.

The New York case has explicitly gone after their support of end-to-end encryption as a target: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-executive-warn...

I’m actually okay with not letting under age people use e2e. I’m not okay with blocking everyone.
I have 2 kids.
I understand the concern but then to make this available for adults you now have to provide proof of age to companies, which opens up another can of privacy worms.
Theoretically we don't actually need proof of age. Websites need to know when the user is attempting to create an account or log in from a child-locked device. Parents need to make sure their kids only have child-locked devices. Vendors need to make sure they don't sell unlocked devices to kids.
Children do not want child locked devices and they will find alternatives