Meta Settles Privacy and Social Media Addiction Claims with $18 Billion Payment
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Meta agreed to the measures to settle claims from dozens of states over children's privacy and social media addiction. The company will pay the states up to $18 billion and enforce policies such as a two-hour default time limit on Facebook and Instagram for under 18s and a nighttime block on the apps (parents will be able to reduce those restrictions). Meta pledged to make the time limits stricter if TikTok and YouTube get onboard as well — as it stands, it only committed to enforcing those particular measures for five years.
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The VergeMeta just agreed to make sweeping changes for teens as part of a child safety settlement reached with attorneys general across the US. Under the agreement, Meta must apply new safeguards across Instagram and Facebook that will change how teens interact with the social media platforms, as well as restrict their use during certain times.
TechCrunchUnder the terms of its $18 billion settlement to resolve claims brought by 29 U.S. states over children’s safety, Meta on Wednesday agreed to sweeping changes designed to restrict minors’ access to Instagram and Facebook. The changes include a daily time limit, a restrictive “Night Mode,” autoplay controls, and more.
CNETIn its post, Meta outlined a series of changes to both Instagram and Facebook that will apply only to those under 18. Most of the changes were required as part of the lawsuit settlement, notably the creation of daily limits and night mode controls for teens, as well as the adoption of age-assurance measures to help prevent cheating the system. As part of the agreement, Meta has denied any wrongdoing.
Ars TechnicaMeta is facing claims that it designed its products to foster compulsive use by children and failed to warn users of addiction and mental health risks. Meta, which already uses ID checks and face analysis to verify user ages, said it agreed to impose on people under 18 a “default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent’s permission,” a default block between midnight and 6 am, and a school mode in which notifications are muted by default from 8 am to 3 pm.
ZDNetMeta has settled a lawsuit surrounding teen social media use. The settlement brings big changes and an $18 billion penalty.
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Additionally, the company will mute notifications by default during school timings, which it is setting as between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. During those hours, teens won’t receive push notifications, except for DMs and alerts related to account security or safety.
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ZDNetMuted push notifications There's now a much smaller window when push notifications will come through to a teen account. Push notifications will be silenced from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. During those hours, Meta says the only alerts that will come through are direct messages and alerts about account security or safety.
The VergeDuring this time, teens can’t post on either platform or view feeds, stories, reels, or scroll through their Explore page. Teens will still be able to access messaging features and account settings at night, and parents, again, can adjust the setting. Muted notifications during the school day : Teens won’t receive push notifications by default between 8AM and 3PM, except for “direct messages and alerts about their account security or safety,” unless the setting is changed by a parent. Toggle off autoplay : Teens will get the option to turn off autoplay, which means they’ll have to tap or swipe their screen to view content, rather than Instagram or Facebook playing it as soon as it appears on their screen.
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The company’s line of smart glasses already disables their built-in cameras if someone covers the LED capture light, which blinks to alert others that you’re recording or taking a picture. However, some wearers found that they can bypass these restrictions by covering the LED light after they started recording. This latest fix comes a little over a month after Meta updated its glasses to turn off its camera when wearers physically tamper with the capture light.
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EngadgetHimel suggested that Meta is still working on additional privacy features for its glasses. "We're going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone's gallery," he wrote. "Only a tiny minority of people try to get around these protections, and the fact they have to go to these lengths shows our efforts are working."
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The settlement “gives the AGs what they want, which is the political story that they’ve extracted a huge amount of benefit for the public from this settlement, including the platform changes,” Jessica Nall, a technology litigator at Withers, told TechCrunch. But Nall noted the settlement’s real-dollar impact is softer than the headline number suggests. “The fact that it’s being paid over 10 years really does blunt the financial impact of the large number, especially compared to Meta’s annual revenue… We’re talking about one of these tech companies where their annual revenue is larger than the GDP of most European countries.”
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CNETThe settlement is ultimately less than 10% of Meta’s 2025 annual revenue ($201 billion), and it’s significantly less than the potential $200 billion penalty the states said would be likely during the early stages of the trial. It’s the proposed platform changes that will likely have the biggest impact on Meta.
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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 ZDNet Here's a look at what's going to be different and where that money is going. What's changing on Facebook and Instagram
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02 Engadget The seemingly simple loophole is one that has been repeatedly highlighted online in tutorials about how to bypass the light. "The camera won't start recording if the LED is blocked, but some people try to bypass this by starting a recording and then covering it up," Himel wrote in a post on Threads. "A fix for this is starting to roll out – the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording."
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03 TechCrunch That permission is being granted for the limited purpose of training and testing Meta’s age-assurance model and includes guardrails, but it’s a curious policy decision to make in a case centered on child safety, and one that could be difficult to properly enforce.
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04 The Verge Meta addresses ‘pervert glasses’ reputation with a privacy fix and a new marketing campaign
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05 CNET In an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday, attorney and co-director of the AI Now research institute, Amba Kak, said the changes don’t address the platform’s architecture, which is designed to addict teenagers with features like infinite scroll. “It’s the business model of surveillance advertising, where it is the optimization of engagement and attention at any cost,” Kak said. “And I think if we don’t get at those root cause fixes, we’re going to be stuck playing whack-a-mole.”
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06 Ars Technica The primary settlement provides up to $16.7 billion for 47 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico. The settlement has a clause that would reduce Meta’s payment by $5 billion if other top social media firms don’t agree to similar terms.
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Sources (6)
- verge
- cnet
- techcrunch
- zdnet
- arstechnica
- engadget