Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta agreed to pay roughly $18 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children through addictive design.
NBC News reports that the settlement, which still needs a judge’s approval, came one day after Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified in a California courtroom. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had also been expected to take the stand before the deal was reached.
In a statement, Meta said “the agreement includes a payment of approximately $18 billion, which can be used to fund youth online safety initiatives, among other state priorities.” The company said the deal is part of a broader agreement with 52 attorneys general nationwide, extending well beyond the 29 states that sued in California.
Meta did not concede wrongdoing. A court filing states the company “denies the allegations against it and that it has any liability to the Plaintiffs.”
Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey and other states had accused Meta of designing addictive products that harmed children and of violating federal privacy and consumer protection laws. Meta pushed back, arguing the states were cherry-picking features while ignoring safety tools it already offers, including teen accounts that default to private, time-limit reminders, parental supervision options, and restrictions on who can contact minors and what content they see.
Under the settlement, Meta will build in daily limits and nighttime blocks for teenage users. The court filing says the company “commits to establishing daily limits and blocks on nighttime use for teenage users.” Teen accounts on Facebook and Instagram will default to a combined two-hour daily use limit, and teens will need parental permission to turn that limit off.
The company also agreed to stronger age checks, described in the filing as “enhanced age assurance measures to prevent children from accessing the platform, or age restricted content available on the platform.” Other changes include hiding likes on teens’ posts by default, blocking “extreme makeup filters,” letting teens disable autoplay video, and giving teens the option to make a different kind of feed their default. Meta described that option as letting users “choose a non-algorithmic feed, one that isn’t personalized by our recommendation systems, as their default.”
The settlement also calls for what the filing describes as “additional tools to help parents and guardians to protect their children online.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the litigation, said the state had “secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families.” He added that “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms, and will do it within months.”
Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a separate statement that the “framework we’ve negotiated will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms.” He also pressed rival platforms to follow suit: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away.”
Read more at NBC News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.