Meta Settles Child Safety Lawsuit with State Penalties of Up to $17 Billion
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Today's top stories Meta has agreed to pay states up to $17 billion in penalties as part of a settlement agreement for a landmark federal child safety lawsuit. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey accused Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to be addictive for children, claiming the company knew the risks but hid that information from the public. Meta denies these allegations. A portion of the proposed settlement is expected to be allocated to support youth mental health programs, after-school activities and crisis intervention services. Meta also agreed to make changes to its platforms, including a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18, a default block on nighttime use and a ban on displaying the number of likes and reactions on posts.
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Democracy NowProsecutors across 47 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories have announced a groundbreaking legal settlement with technology giant Meta over accusations that the social media company deliberately designed addictive products they knew to be harmful to children. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is set to pay at least $12 billion and up to $17.1 billion in financial penalties, in addition to implementing design changes for underage users. “This is the least they can do to prevent harms that have metastasized and have already caused suicides … [but] we cannot be relying on fines, or certainly even on litigation, after harms have already transpired. What we need are rules of the road.
PBS NewsHour$17B Meta settlement puts focus on youth mental health crisis, Colorado AG says Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion in a settlement, putting to rest a trial where dozens of states accused it of deliberately endangering children through their platforms. The company behind Facebook and Instagram agreed to implement digital guardrails for minors and is asking other social platforms to do the same. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.
The AtlanticMeta avoided the worst today by settling a massive lawsuit over alleged damages “to the mental and physical wellbeing of America’s youth.” The case, brought by the attorneys general of 47 states, plus U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., had been mid-trial in a federal court in California and was by far the most significant legal challenge the company has ever faced. To resolve the lawsuit, Meta will have to make a slew of design changes to its social-media platforms, and it will pay more than $12 billion—down from the approximately $200 billion that was initially sought, and a fraction of the $60 billion that the company made in profit last year.
New York TimesWhat Meta’s $17 Billion Settlement Means Our reporter Cecilia Kang explains Meta’s settlement of a lawsuit claiming that the company’s social media platforms had harmed teenage users.
The Guardian USGood morning. Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit. The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.
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Will other companies be affected? Meta is putting the agreement forward as a precedent for other social media companies to follow. The company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers … to implement this new framework.” Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general.
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The AtlanticThe company is now promoting the changes widely and calling on other social-media platforms to follow suit. It has also agreed to pay an additional $5.3 billion if TikTok and YouTube, which are also defendants in the ongoing litigation, implement restrictions and pay into the settlement. Although this is not the end of Meta’s legal battles—personal-injury lawsuits similar to the one it lost in March will likely keep coming—the company has won the opportunity to select its own restrictions, define its own limits, and discard its own deal-breakers, effectively setting a standard that the rest of the industry will be expected to abide by without having had any say in its creation.
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The settlement also requires limits on features that some experts believe are detrimental to teenagers’ self-esteem and self-image. By default, teen users won’t see the number of likes or reactions on posts; they also won’t be able to use “cosmetic procedure filters,” which have been a sore spot for Meta for some time. When the plaintiffs filed their complaint, they cited evidence that Mark Zuckerberg had personally vetoed a proposed in-house policy against these filters despite concerns expressed by employees that they were causing young people to develop body dysmorphia. Meta will also be legally required to maintain and enforce the “age-appropriate” content guidelines it debuted at the end of last year.
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PBS NewsHourWith time limits and stronger age checks, Meta's new rules for kids go further. Critics say it's not enough Meta has agreed to strengthen its age estimates to keep kids under 13 off its platforms and teens in age-appropriate accounts, enact a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18, block kids from the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and hide "like" counts, among other changes.
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Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 New York Times Parents Say Meta Settlement Is Big, but Not Enough Across the country, parents described feeling some validation after the landmark $17.1 billion settlement. But they also felt skeptical that much of anything will change.
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02 NPR News Good morning. You're reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.
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03 The Guardian US What will be changing in the apps? The biggest alteration is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is now required to make many of its safety limitations the default setting for accounts created by teens, a pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety. Nick Robins-Early and Johana Bhuiyan explain more in this piece: six key takeaways from the end of the Meta trial.
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05 The Atlantic The former claim will have to be proved over time, but the latter is clearly true. As part of the agreement, Meta has agreed to submit to regular auditing of both its age-verification systems and its efforts to prevent minors from making multiple accounts to get around its restrictions. And the company will make other tweaks that are intended to target the big recent villains of social media: short-form video and the never-ending feed.
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06 Democracy Now And we need rules that go to the root cause of the business model,” says Amba Kak, the co-executive director of AI Now Institute, who joins us for a wide-ranging discussion on tech policy and regulation. Kak, who advises various governments on AI regulatory guidelines, adds, “The era of looking to tech CEOs or tech luminaries to give us answers for what are fundamentally social and political questions, I think, is gone.” Please check back later for full transcript.
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