Meta to pay up to $18bn to settle claims its platforms harm children
Social media giant Meta has agreed to a US$18bn (£13.3bn) settlement with US states and territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harm children.
The landmark multistate settlement has been described as a “historic step” in protecting consumers, and marks the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
The agreement resolves claims by 47 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands that the company designed its platform with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things.
Under the settlement, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children and teenagers on Instagram and Facebook.
These include a default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent’s permission, and allowing teens to choose a non-algorithmic feed – one that isn’t personalised by Meta’s recommendation systems.
Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, has denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and the company said on Wednesday that the payment “will be distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period.”
Following the court decision, Meta also urged TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar measures, as “we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another.”
If Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes.
The changes to Instagram and Facebook are more significant and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court, said attorney general Jennifer Davenport.
However, commentators such as Siobhán MacDermott, founder and CEO of TeenAegis, a platform designed to protect children online, have questioned whether the ruling should be considered a victory against one of the world’s biggest tech giants.
MacDermott said on LinkedIn: “This is not a win for kids. It may be a significant legal and political development. A multibillion-dollar settlement and a few new product commitments are not nothing.
“But let’s stop confusing the cost of getting caught with the cost of preventing harm. Money paid after children have already been exposed to products engineered around compulsion, comparison, recommendation and engagement is not prevention.
“A few time limits and forced pauses do not answer the central question: why were these systems designed to maximise the very behaviours now being described as harmful?
“And a settlement is not the same as accountability. It does not, by itself, tell parents what the company knew, when it knew it, which warnings were ignored, who made the decisions, or why the safer design lost to the more profitable one.
“But the most damning part is what this says about the United States legal system. Our system does not protect children before the harm occurs.
“It waits for families to find lawyers. It waits for researchers to produce more evidence. It waits for children to become statistics, plaintiffs, exhibits and witnesses. It waits while companies bury documents, exhaust families and keep the same products in the hands of millions of children.
“Then, years later, after the damage is undeniable, the company writes a check – and we are expected to applaud. That is not justice. It is a delayed invoice.
“A real win for kids would require independent safety testing before major products and design changes reach them; meaningful data access for researchers and regulators; public disclosure of known risks; an enforceable duty of care; and penalties large enough to make prevention more profitable than concealment.”
