Meta’s $17 billion teen settlement still needs a judge, and ten years still needs TikTok and YouTube
Meta bought a five-year default and a ten-year headline.
Fortune‘s Carolina Rossini, writing for The Conversation, says Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion over 10 years to settle claims from a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. The settlement was announced August 26. It ended a federal trial that had barely begun in Oakland. Meta denies wrongdoing. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers still has to approve it.
Fortune frames that $17 billion as roughly 1% of Meta’s expected revenue over the same stretch. The company told investors it will not change financial guidance beyond a single quarterly expense.
The states argued Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to hook children, misled the public about harm, and improperly collected data from children under 13. Fortune describes the agreement with 47 states. States had argued penalties could reach hundreds of billions.
For teens under 18 on Instagram and Facebook in participating states, the clock starts at two hours a day, counted across both apps. Only a parent can lift it. There is also a block from midnight to 6 a.m. Notifications mute during school hours, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., except DMs. A prompt hits every 15 minutes of continuous scrolling.
Teens get an option of a non-algorithmic feed. Autoplay can be turned off, and parents can set that default. Like counts hidden by default. Blocks on cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters. Stronger under-13 age detection.
The two-hour cap and the overnight block are committed for five years. They extend to 10 years, with stricter defaults, only if YouTube and TikTok agree to the same kind of rules.
An independent auditor reviews compliance every year for five years, against a 10-year agreement. An independent research foundation is promised. Who picks the auditor, and what they can see, is not yet public.
A Los Angeles jury separately awarded $4.2 million against Meta and $1.8 million against Google on a negligence claim. Meta is appealing. New Mexico judgments sit above $900 million, and Meta is challenging those. Neither case is closed by Oakland.
I would treat ten years as a clause.
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