A New Mexico judge just ordered Meta to pay nearly $1 billion for exploiting children on its platforms — and Mark Zuckerberg's response was to appeal rather than fix what's broken.

While parents across the country watch their kids get chewed up by algorithms designed to addict them, Meta's playbook stays the same: profit from the harm, then fight the consequences in court. Now California is next, and the stakes are even higher.

The New Mexico case landed in two phases. In March, a jury ruled Meta must pay $375 million for violating the state's unfair practices act. Then Judge Bryan Biedcheid ordered another $567 million into an abatement fund for child sexual exploitation treatment services. New Mexico AG Raul Torrez called it a "pretty substantial judgment" — but noted it's a state of just 2 million people. Map those same violations onto California, Texas, or New York, and the numbers become, in Torrez's word, "astronomical."

Meta said it disagrees and plans to appeal.

The court also ordered specific fixes: Meta must improve its age-assurance models, develop a prediction model for users under 13 within two years, make it easier to report underage usage, and partner with schools or child safety organizations on reporting. These are basic, obvious steps — the kind Meta should have taken years ago without a judge forcing their hand.

Opening arguments begin Tuesday in Oakland federal court, where California AG Rob Bonta is co-leading a coalition of 29 state attorneys general against Meta. The allegations: Meta violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and consumer protection statutes by building addictive behavior into Facebook and Instagram. A Los Angeles jury has already found Meta negligent in a separate case alleging Instagram and YouTube were designed to harm minors.

Julia Powles, executive director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, told CNBC that California "matters more than any other jurisdiction in the U.S." because it's where Meta faces "the greatest legal reach, and it's a jurisdiction watched around the world."

Follow the money. Meta pulls 98% of its revenue from online advertising — the same ad machine that incentivizes keeping kids scrolling. Zuckerberg needs that cash flow to fund his $145 billion AI bet this year. Every dollar spent on child safety is a dollar not spent on the next big thing.

So Meta is working the back channels too. In June, the company launched a lobbying campaign to get exempted from lawsuits alleging online harm to kids. Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway told Reuters the provision "wouldn't get rid of existing lawsuits" and the immunity "wouldn't cover everything." Instead, she said, it "establishes uniform national standards for online youth safety, ensuring these critical issues are governed by comprehensive federal legislation, not plaintiffs' lawyers or patchwork state legislation."

Translation: Meta wants Congress to write rules it can live with rather than face 50 different state courts it can't control.

Industry watchers are calling this social media's "Big Tobacco" moment — the same comparison that was made when cigarette companies were forced to pay billions for misleading the public about their products' harms. CNBC framed it that way; Baltimore News didn't mention it. But the parallel is clear: a company builds a product it knows harms kids, buries the evidence, and fights accountability until the courts force its hand.

The question now is whether California delivers the reckoning New Mexico started — or whether Zuckerberg's lobbying and legal war of attrition buys him another decade of algorithmic exploitation dressed up as innovation.