Meta agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit on Wednesday. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products.
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.
This is the first time in the US that Meta has been forced to change key features of the experience of everyday users.
The jury trial, which took place in federal court in Oakland, California, began with opening statements just last week. California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. The states additionally claimed the social media company regularly collected data on children under the age of 13 without parental permission in violation of federal and state laws. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing.
“Today, we have 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,” Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, said in a statement. “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms – and will do it within months.”
Bonta said those changes included time limits, stopping notifications during school, a block on the app during critical overnight hours, bans on plastic surgery filters and more.
The $18bn settlement will be divided between the states over a period of 10 years, subject to court approval. California would receive between $1.5bn and $2.1bn and Colorado will get about $615m.
“The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order,” said Phil Weiser, the attorney general of Colorado, adding: “The focus of this case was to protect our kids.”
Throughout the proceedings, Meta denied all allegations, saying states were chasing an “outlandish payout”. On Wednesday, the company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said the settlement reached with the states would only work if all social media companies changed their platform designs.
“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away,” Mahoney said in a statement. “As a parent, I’m proud of both the work Meta has done to protect kids historically, and of this new groundbreaking agreement. But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta’s lead.”
Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general. Meta and YouTube lost the first of those cases to go to trial in February, being ordered to pay $6m to the young woman who brought the suit. (TikTok and Snap settled before the case went to trial.) Two more lawsuits that were slated to go to trial this summer, one federal and one in California state court, also settled for undisclosed sums.
Meta lost a separate suit, brought by the attorney general of New Mexico, where it was ordered to pay nearly $1bn to the state for allowing child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
The trial in Oakland was expected to last for several weeks with dozens of witnesses taking the stand. Instead, there were only four days of proceedings.
Jurors first heard from the states’ star witness, Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety engineer turned whistleblower. He testified that the company had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy when it comes to the safety of children on its platforms.
Béjar said that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, was aware of the harms of Instagram and Facebook, but that the executive publicly touted the platforms’ safety.
“I felt that he created a false and misleading impression of Facebook’s commitment to young people,” Béjar testified.
Zuckerberg had been listed as a witness in the trial but did not testify before the settlement agreement was reached.
On Tuesday, questioning of Adam Mosseri, the Instagram CEO, began with the lawyer for the states accusing the company of touting safety features for teens, but not being forthcoming that young people don’t use them.
When the executive was faced with multiple questions about not disclosing those low user numbers, Mosseri brushed them aside, saying: “We don’t publish every single stat.”
