An older jury in New Mexico's landmark trial against Meta Platforms is getting a crash course in how social media works, along with internet language, as the trial in the state's consumer protection lawsuit against Meta gets underway.
An older jury in New Mexico's landmark trial against Meta Platforms is getting a crash course in how social media works, along with internet language, as the trial in the state's consumer protection lawsuit against Meta gets underway.On day three of the trial at the New Mexico First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, Judge Bryan Biedscheid asked the state’s witness, Arturo Bejar, to describe to the jury “what is a Reel,” “what is a DM” and how encryption on messages works before testimony resumed Wednesday morning.
Bejar explained the social media mechanics to the jury in what is expected to be a six- to seven-week trial where they will have to determine whether the company violated consumer protection laws by misleading and deceiving consumers about how much harm children faced on its platforms (see here).
The testimony by Meta's former director of engineering from 2009 to 2015, who came back as a consultant from 2019 to 2021, was highly technical regarding the products he worked on (see here). He was the first former Meta employee to testify in the landmark trial.
Bejar explained that a “DM” is a direct message, or text made on the app, and that “Reels” refers to the short videos people can pull up and watch infinitely, made to compete with TikTok. He also explained that encryption is a privacy mechanism that prevents people other than those sending and receiving the messages from receiving them, even if the server transmitting the messages is compromised.
Bejar has used colorful language throughout his two-day testimony to describe how people spoke about photos of genitalia and lewd comments, including what “no nut November ends tomorrow” meant on a video of an underage girl.
As a result, Biedscheid briefly paused testimony Tuesday to ask the jury if they were comfortable with the language when Bejar explained how a young woman was getting unsolicited “dick pics.”
Jurors largely nodded their heads yes, and multiple audibly assented.
The Santa Fe jury of 10 women and eight men — 12 jurors and six alternates — is largely an older group, scattered with grey hair and multiple people using accessibility devices to tune into the trial.
Thus far in the trial, the jury has been attentive, taking notes, nodding along and leaning into the computer screens that display exhibits.
An older jury was predictable. The Santa Fe area is a retirement destination, and about 30 percent of the county population is 65 or older, according to 2025 US Census data..
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