Meta decided that discretion was the better part of valor on Wednesday, agreeing to settle a landmark child safety case for up to $17 billion. The agreement would introduce a default two-hour daily limit for teens on Instagram and Facebook, overnight restrictions, and a range of other protections.
It also brings the trial to an early end before Mark Zuckerberg, who was listed as a witness, could testify.
The company reached the settlement with a bipartisan coalition of 51 state attorneys general, after four days of proceedings in a federal trial in Oakland.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey led the case, which they filed in 2023. It alleged that Meta broke state laws by designing addictive products for young users without warning them of the risks. It also accused the company of violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) law, which protects the privacy of children under 13.
Because violating these laws carries potentially hefty fees for each violation, Meta’s liability could reportedly have run to $1.4 trillion had it lost at trial. The states had proposed a penalty of $193 billion. By settling, Meta reduced that potential bill considerably.
Meta denies the allegations, and we should point out the settlement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing.
What Meta will have to do in the US
Under the agreement, Meta must introduce a default two-hour daily limit for Facebook and Instagram users under 18 in participating US states and territories that only a parent can lift.
Meta must also block access between midnight and 6:00 am unless a parent intervenes. Most notifications will be silenced between 10:00 pm and 7:00 am, and during the school day from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm between August 15 and June 15.
The social media giant must also hide likes and reaction counts from users under 18 by default. Teens will also be banned from applying filters that imitate cosmetic procedures, although ordinary makeup, skin-smoothing, fantasy, and parody effects are excluded.
Teens can opt into a chronological feed populated by accounts they follow or have friended, rather than content selected by Meta’s recommendation algorithm. Meta must also provide its decision within six hours in at least 90% of English- and Spanish-language reports from teens about specified categories of potentially harmful content.
An independent auditor will be checking all of this and reporting directly to a bipartisan committee of attorneys general. Public summaries of its findings will also be published. This is the piece of the agreement that most looks like ongoing regulation rather than a one-off payment.
Payment and conditions
Meta won’t pay all the money at once. It must pay more than $12 billion, mostly in installments over the next decade, with another $5 billion dependent on changes across the wider social media industry.
Meta only has to make the conditional payments if Snap, YouTube, and TikTok adopt equivalent time limits, overnight restrictions, and age-assurance measures. Rival companies with annual profits above $10 billion must also face comparable payments to the states.
If those conditions are met, Meta will move to a 60-minute daily limit on each platform, with a maximum of two hours across its platforms, and expand the overnight restrictions from midnight–6:00 am to 10:00 pm–7:00 am.
Damning testimony in court
A 2021 internal survey found that 51% of teen Instagram users said “yes” to having a bad or harmful experience on the app within the previous seven days , according to former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, who testified at the trial.
The same survey found the harmful content was taken down just 0.02% of the time.
Béjar said he sent the findings to Zuckerberg but didn’t get a response, and testified that the company operated a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy toward the safety of children on its platforms.
Other legal woes for Meta
This lawsuit isn’t the first that Meta has dealt with out of court. In May it settled a case brought by a Kentucky school district that accused social media platforms of creating a mental health crisis in its schools. Snap, YouTube, and TikTok had already settled the case, which was seen as a test for a much larger group of lawsuits—what’s called a “bellwether case”.
Meta has fared poorly in the cases that have reached a verdict. In March, Meta and Google lost another bellwether case in Los Angeles, brought by a 20-year-old user who accused it them of creating an addictive product that affected her mental health from an early age.
Meta also lost a recent child safety case in New Mexico, resulting in almost $942 million in penalties after the judge accused it of creating “a public nuisance” with its platform design.
This settlement doesn’t end Meta’s legal problems. There are roughly 3,000 addiction lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap currently underway. More than 1,000 school districts also have cases pending.
And the law doesn’t seem to be on its side. In early August, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Section 230 offers “a defense against liability,” rather than immunity from being sued in the first place .
Advice for parents right now
In January, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement arguing that parents shouldn’t have to govern their kids’ welfare in a digital world by relying on screen time limits alone. Tech companies and governments should focus on healthy platform design themselves, it added.
This settlement seems to take a step toward that, although it took 51 attorneys general and a federal trial to get Meta there.
Big tech companies have repeatedly shown that parents cannot rely on them to put children’s interests first. With this in mind, read the Malwarebytes research and guide to keeping your kids safe online.
From reporting threats to removing them.
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.
Login
