Mexico to force Meta, TikTok, and X to better protect minors on platform

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a presidential decree on October 14, 2026, requiring digital platforms including TikTok, Meta, and X to protect children from violent, sexual, and other harmful content online, giving platforms one month to comply. The decree establishes that digital platforms must, by design, restrict exposure to content involving violence, harassment, or sexual abuse and immediately remove any risky material from the profiles of minors. President Sheinbaum stated that the government would back legislation to penalize companies that fail to implement the decree, saying if no progress is made it would become a law. The decree followed an attack by two 18-year-olds on their former high school in the northern state of Coahuila in early October that killed one and wounded three others.

Design-level content restrictions address what appears on public feeds but leave direct-message conversations largely unaddressed, and mandatory removal of risky material depends on detection mechanisms that often activate only after harm has occurred or been reported. The anti-grooming, anti-sextortion, and anti-cyberbullying detection modules identify sustained targeting, escalation, and coercion in children's direct messages in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox, and other platforms, blocking or flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target. This approach, developed by a world-leading AI online-safety platform and Meta Business Partner backed by Startmate, surfaces a child in crisis to a parent, school, or professional and enables rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency, detecting threat patterns rather than reading every message and operating at the point of contact rather than after public posting.