They Created a Fake 13-Year-Old. What Happened Next Changed Everything.

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]In 2023, investigators from the New Mexico Attorney General's office created a fake social media profile. The user was supposed to be a 13-year-old girl.

[00:00:10]They put it on Facebook, they put it on Instagram, two platforms that belong to one of the most powerful companies in the world. And they watched what happened. What happened in the attorney general's own words was shocking. Within a very short time, the account was flooded with solicitations, requests for explicit material, and a surge of followers, almost all adult men from around the world. And when that growth spiked on a minor's account, Meta's platform didn't flag it. It sent the account tips on how to grow its following and monetize. On March 24th, 2026, a New Mexico jury delivered the first verdict of its kind. In American legal history, Meta is liable $375 million. And the attorney general who won it says it's just the beginning.

[00:01:17]For nearly 30 years, the technology industry has operated behind a legal shield that most people have never heard of. Section 230, six words from a 1996 law called the Communications Decency Act. The provision was written at a time when the internet was dialup bulletin boards, forums, AOL chat rooms, before smartphones, before social media, before a company could put the entire internet in the pocket of every child in America and call it a feature. What section 230 says in its most basic form is that internet platforms can't be held legally responsible for content posted by their users. The theory made sense in 1996.

[00:02:05]If you're a bulletin board and someone posts something harmful, you know you're a passive host, not a publisher. You shouldn't be liable for what your users do. But as you understand, 2026 is not 1996. The platforms that now dominate children's online lives are not passive hosts. They're active architects designing algorithms that decide what content reaches whom. Build recommendation engines that connect users to communities based on shared interests. making deliberate product choices about who can see what, who can contact whom, and what happens when a minor's account attracts a surge of adult followers. For years, every attempt to hold these companies accountable in court, ran to section 230, and died there until New Mexico tried a different approach. And on March 24th, 2026, a jury in Santa Fe delivered a verdict that legal experts are already calling a generation defining moment.

[00:03:18]This is how it happened and this is what it means. It starts in 2023. Raul Torres, the New Mexico Attorney General, has been watching the existing legal landscape and deciding that conventional approaches just won't work. suing Meta for what users post gets stopped by section 230. But Torres's team had a different theory. And to build the case for it, they needed to see what the platform actually does. They create undercover accounts, multiple profiles posing as users younger than 14 years old. And on both Facebook and Instagram, the accounts are set up as minors.

[00:04:05]They're visible on the platform and the investigators sit back and document what happens. What happens is fast and it's specific. The accounts are flooded.

[00:04:17]Solicitations, requests for explicit material, a rapid overwhelming surge of follower growth dominated by adult men located around the world. The investigators document all of it. They record what the platform serves to the accounts, who contacts them, and how the system responds. And here's the detail that becomes central to the entire prosecution.

[00:04:44]When the follower growth surges on an account that is visibly marked as belonging to a 13-year-old girl, Meta's platform doesn't pause. It doesn't flag the account for review. It doesn't alert a safety team. It sends the account information on how to grow and its user base and how to monetize its following.

[00:05:09]Taurus describes it as in his own words speaking publicly about the investigation. It's a clear example of what's wrong at the core of this company. They could have continued to prioritize engagement over safety. The operation runs deeper. Using the same decoy accounts to document solicitation activity, Torres's office builds criminal cases. Three New Mexico men were arrested May 2024. Two of them are apprehended at a motel, a location where they believed based on conversations conducted through Meta's platform, they were meeting a 12year-old girl. three criminal arrests out of one undercover sting on a platform with over three billion users. In 2023, Torres files a suit against Meta. The civil case centers on New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, a consumer protection statute, and the framing of the case is deliberate and precise.

[00:06:09]New Mexico is not suing Meta for the content on its platform. It's not saying Meta is responsible for what individual bad actors posted or sent. It is suing Meta for the design of its product, the algorithmic choices, the recommendation architecture, the default settings, the deliberate engineering decisions that enabled predators to find and target children at scale. The framing is everything because section 230 protects platforms from liability for user generated content. It does not. The New Mexico legal team argues protect platforms from liability for the product design choices they make themselves. The algorithm isn't usergenerated content.

[00:06:56]The recommendation engine isn't usergenerated content. The decision to make Facebook Messenger endtoend encrypted by default, that's not user generated content. That's a corporate product decision. Meta's defense team argues this framing is misleading. That Meta doesn't make robust disclosures, that it does invest heavily in its safety technology, that no platform can catch every piece of harmful content, and that prosecutors are cherry-picking internal documents to paint an unfair picture. Defense attorney Kevin Huff tells the jury, "What the evidence shows is Meta's robust disclosures and tireless efforts to prevent harmful content. The jury doesn't buy it." The 6E trial opens in Santa Fe's first judicial court in February of 2026. It will include some of the most significant corporate whistleblower testimonies in tech industry history.

[00:07:57]This is the part of the trial that landed hardest. Not the attorney general's undercover operation, not the statistical evidence, the people who used to work there. Arturo Behar spent 6 years at an engineering and product leader at Meta. He had testified before the US Senate about platform safety. He took the stand in Santa Fe and said something that the courtroom heard clearly. His own 14-year-old daughter had received unwanted sexual solicitations on Instagram. He had raised alarms inside the company. He had flagged it internally. He was largely ignored. This is a guy who worked at Meta and then described how Meta's core recommendation technology actually works in practice. The algorithm, he explained, is designed to connect users and with content and communities that match their expressed or inferred interests. It does this very well. It does it for everyone. And so he told the court, "If a user's interest is little girls, the platform will be very good at connecting them with little girls." That quote clinical precise from someone who built the product cut through every piece of corporate PR in the courtroom.

[00:09:14]And see this part is interesting because this is coming from an engineer formerly working at Meta Counter Trafficking Alliance. My own organization actually ran our own independent investigation. I will link the thread in the description below. But basically we did our own amateur investigation into Instagram and we found this very thing and we documented everything. Um you know users soliciting material and soliciting content from each other using actual emojis like pizzas. It's a real thing. Using emojis like pizzas to signal for the content that they were looking for. And it was interesting not not just that that that was actually existing on the platform and that there were no red flags to flag that but the fact that the algorithm we found our we saw it with our own eyes. I saw it with my own eyes that the algorithm continued to feed the user more and more accounts suggesting them at the bottom more accounts you would like to follow even suggesting actual profiles of little girls. Now, this experience, this investigation that we conducted ourselves was so profound that it really showed me that no matter if you have just innocent pictures online of your children, whether they are behind a private profile on Facebook or on Instagram, somehow these users, these creeps, these disgusting people online are finding a way to obtain these images and distort them into these sexualized ideas of what they want to generate of your child, you know, and so um that's just a little tidbit, you know, somebody who has actually seen the algorithm do this. And again, I will link the thread if you guys are on X, that's where it exists. I will try to format this on my website, countertraickingalliance.com.

[00:11:11]Um, I will try to format this in an article so that way you guys can see how we documented, you know, um, stage by stage how this algorithm actually did exactly what Arturo just testified here.

[00:11:24]Brian Boland spent nearly 12 years at Meta as a VP of partnerships product marketing. He left in 2020. He testified that when he walked out of that company, he absolutely did not believe that safety was a priority to Mark Zuckerberg or then COO Cheryl Sandberg. A recording of Zuckerberg's deposition taken a year before the trial played for jurors in early March 2026, offered the trial's most memorable moments of a different kind. asked whether the research on whether the platforms are addictive was conclusive. Zuckerberg described it as inconclusive. Prosecutors pushed back, noting that Meta's own internal research found several product features were deliberately engineered to produce dopamine responses and increased time spent on the apps. asked whether he as a father had a right to know if a product of his own child was using was addictive. Zuckerberg said that there was a lot to unpack in that. The most technically significant piece of evidence that trial isn't about predators finding children. It's about a corporate decision made in 2019 that prosecutors argue made it dramatically harder for law enforcement to know when children were being harmed. In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook Messenger would implement an endtoend encryption by default. The privacy argument for its decision is real.

[00:13:01]Encrypted messaging protects users from surveillance, from data breaches, from government overreach. These are legitimate concerns, though. But internal meta messages revealed by New Mexico prosecutors during the trial show that the company's own employees were saying privately when the decision was made. They were flagging a specific concern that enabling endto-end encryption by default would affect Meta's ability to report and identify child sexual abuse material to law enforcement. The projected number attached to that concern documented in internal communications approximately 7.5 million reports. 7 and a half million reports to law enforcement. The kind that come with images, accounts, and identifying information that investigators use to find victims and build cases that would be affected by a single default product setting change.

[00:14:04]The decision was made anyway. Meta has since announced it is removing end-to-end encryption from Instagram direct messages saying that very few users were opting in. It is directing users who want encrypted messaging to WhatsApp. But the internal timeline, the documents showing the company knew what the encryption decision would do to its law enforcement reporting capability and proceeded anyway is now part of the official trial record in a federal state court verdict. March 23rd, 2026, closing arguments. Attorney Linda Singer addresses the jury on behalf of New Mexico. Over the course of a decade, Meta has failed over and over again to act honestly and transparently. It's failed to act to protect young people in its state. It is up to you to finish this job. She asked for more than $2 billion in damages. Deliberations begin Monday, March 23rd. The jury returns Tuesday, March 24th. The verdict: Meta is liable on all counts. Willful violation of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act. conduct the jury finds to be unfair and deceptive and unconscionable. The maximum penalty under the law, $5,000 per violation. The jury counts the violations. The total is $375 million. Juror Linda Payton speaks publicly after the verdict. She says the jury reached a compromise on how many teenagers to count as affected, but opted for the maximum $5,000 per violation across the board. She thought each child was worth the maximum amount.

[00:15:42]Meet's response. We respectfully disagree on the verdict and will appeal.

[00:15:47]The company stock in after hours trading following the verdict is up 5%. A $ 1.5 trillion company just received a $375 million penalty for conduct the jury found to be willful and unconscionable toward children. Its shareholders shrug.

[00:16:03]Its stock goes up. Torres addresses this directly when asked about it. He doesn't have illusions that $375 million changes behavior on its own at a company that size. But he says that that's not the point of this verdict. The point is the template. One day after the New Mexico verdict, a jury in Los Angeles reaches a separate verdict in a personal injury case brought by a young California woman identified as KGM, now 20 years old, who sued Meta and YouTube for intentionally designing addictive platforms that contributed to her depression and self- removal thoughts during childhood. The jury finds both companies liable.

[00:16:49]Combined compensatory damages were $3 million. Additional punitive damages recommended $3.1 million pending final review. Two juries, two states, two days, one week in March of 2026. Legal analysts are already using the phrase they used decades ago about a different industry, big tobacco moment. The structural parallel is there. internal documents showing companies knew about the harms and continued aggressive marketing to the most vulnerable users.

[00:17:24]Public statements that were contradicted what executives knew privately. And then finally, after years of courtroom defeats, a legal strategy that worked.

[00:17:36]In the 1990s, that strategy took down the tobacco industry. The settlements that followed changed the regulatory landscape permanently. More than 40 state attorneys general now have filed lawsuits against Meta. The New Mexico legal architecture, consumer protection law, product liability framing, design defect rather than content liability is the blueprint all of them are working from. Torres's office has already filed a similar suit against SNAP. his team successfully overcame section 230 motions in both. A May 4th bench trial in Santa Fe will determine whether Meta created a public nuisance in New Mexico and whether the court can order specific mandatory changes to platform designs, age verification, predator removal, protocols, encryption, restrictions from minors, independent monitoring. If those court orders come down, they become a legal standard, a standard that doesn't stay in New Mexico. And thank God, I hope that it passes. Torres, in his public interviews following the verdict, keeps coming back to the same core point about the business model. And it's the thing that parents most need to understand. Meta's revenue comes from advertising.

[00:18:57]Advertising revenue is driven by engagement. Engagement means time on the platform, interactions on the platform, growth of follower networks on the platform. The entire architecture of the business algorithm, the recommendation engine, the notification systems is engineered to maximize one thing, keeping users connected to the product.

[00:19:21]That incentive doesn't discriminate by the age. It applies to a 30-year-old user. It applies to a 13-year-old user.

[00:19:29]And it applies to the undercover operation demonstrated in real time to fake a 13-year-old account that was being flooded with solicitations from adult men. The platform saw engagement.

[00:19:42]It saw follower growth. It responded by helping the account grow even further.

[00:19:50]The same technology that connects teenagers with their friends and their interests also connects predators with the teenagers who match their search patterns. That's not a flaw in the algorithm. That's the algorithm working exactly as designed. Torres put it in plainly in his post verdict interview.

[00:20:12]Parents need to understand that Meta hasn't been honest about the dangers they know exist in these spaces. The internal documents, the whistleblower testimony, the deposition of the CEO himself are all now part of public court record that says the company knew. Its own safety experts told it. Its own engineers flagged it. Its own researchers documented it. And the response for years was to continue prioritizing engagement. On March 24, 2026, a jury of New Mexico citizens sat in Santa Fe courtroom and delivered a verdict that 30 years of internet law had made seem impossible. They said Meta knew. They said Meta chose profits. They said the conduct was willful. And they said each child affected by that choice was worth the maximum penalty the law allowed.

[00:21:06]>> There are kids that were harmed in all of this. So five was kind of like if that's the top tier that were allowed and I think each kid is definitely entitled to that maximum amount.

[00:21:17]I don't believe they're doing these things to intentionally harm children and like they want that to happen, but it was the point of that that they still know that it's happening and yeah, they're doing things to fix it a bit, but I really do think they could be doing more and they have the resources.

[00:21:31]They have they talked about how they know they could be doing more and so I think that was just that's what's really important there at the end is just like they they're not out to do evil in that way. I don't think they're doing it on purpose, but they are aware of what's going on and they know the extent of it and they really do need to fix it as best they can. better than they have been doing.

[00:21:48]>> It's $375 million against a $ 1.5 trillion company. The math is brutal and everyone who follows this case knows it.

[00:21:56]But $375 million is also a legal record another attorney general can site a template that they can replicate. A precedent that multiplied across 40 states adds up to something stock market has to take seriously. May 4th is the next courtroom date. The public nuisance trial. If Judge Beachside orders Meta to implement mandatory design changes, age verification, encryption restrictions for minors, independent monitoring, those orders will be applied to a platform used by billions of people around the world. The ripple effects of single district court judge's order in Santa Fe, New Mexico could reshape how every child in every country experiences social media. Ral Torres calls this the first crack in the dam. And he's right. It's a crack.

[00:22:49]Whether it becomes a flood depends on 40 other state attorneys general, the United States Congress, and ultimately the courts decide to do with the blueprint that he handed them. Meta said it will appeal. The case continues. If you are a parent, the most important thing this case documents isn't the verdict. It's the whistleblower testimony. The platform's own former engineering lead said it directly. If someone's interest is children, the algorithm will connect them with children. That technology is on your child's phone right now. And as of March 2026, a jury has confirmed that the company that built it knew. and chose not to change it. Common Sense Media has resources on platform safety settings for every major social media app. That link is in the description. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Cyber Tip line is also linked below. We will be covering the May bench trial in a follow-up video. Subscribe so you don't miss that.

[00:23:54]Every year, millions of people are trafficked, exploited, displaced, and left without a clear path forward. And it's one of the biggest barriers survivors face, not knowing where to turn. You think that in 2026, by now, with all the organizations, all the awareness campaigns, all of the noise surrounding this issue, finding help would be easy. But it's not. When we first started our organization, Counter Trafficking Alliance, we didn't rush to build anything. We spent years doing research, talking to people, talking to ministries, talking to people who were on the front lines doing this particular work, digging into what resources actually existed and whether survivors could realistically access them. What we found was hard to ignore. Resources are scattered, disorganized, hard to navigate even when they're supposedly listed by some of the biggest names in this industry. We saw gatekeeping where there should have been open doors. We saw survivors hitting dead ends when they needed a lifeline. Infrastructure existed. The information existed, but it wasn't being made accessible to the people that needed it the most. We didn't like that. So, we decided to do something about it. That changes today.

[00:25:07]I'm proud to announce the relaunch of countert traffickingalliance.org, or a centralized resource directory built specifically for human trafficking victims and survivors. Whether you're in crisis right now building after escaping a trafficking situation or you might be supporting someone who is, this site was made for you. Inside you'll find dedicated hotlines available around the clock, emergency shelter listings, traumainformed counseling services, legal aid and case referrals, and much more. All in one place. No deadends, no gatekeeping, just real resources ready when you need them. But here's the truth. Keeping this alive has a cost.

[00:25:52]You see, we didn't just want to sell you an idea of this website. We actually wanted to put this in tangible fruition for you to click and view. And now that it is there, it's built. This has to go on. The technology behind this directory, the hosting, the development, the work it takes to keep every single resource accurate and up todate, none of that is free. And we have bigger plans, tools, and features we want to build that could reach even more survivors, even more families, more people who desperately need it. This doesn't exist without support, your support. And so, if this mission matters to you, if you believe every survivor deserves a lifeline, I'm asking you to give what you can. $5, $20, whatever you're able to, even reoccurringly.

[00:26:48]Every contribution keeps this resource free and accessible for the people who need it the most. Share this video, share the site, and if you can, please give because behind every click on that directory is a real person looking for a way out. And we want to make sure that that door is always open.