Report from the Wall Street Journal
In Brief – Meta has agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 state attorneys general, ending a major federal trial over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed teenagers and signaling how the top social media platforms may change their operations to address government concerns. Meta will make changes to Instagram and Facebook for users under 18, including imposing a default two-hour daily time limit, a “night mode” blocking access between midnight and 6 am, and a “school mode” disabling push notifications from 8 am to 3 pm, with changes to these settings requiring parental permission. Meta will pay 70% of the settlement but the remainder, $5.3 billion, is contingent on fellow social media giants TikTok and YouTube agreeing to similar daily limit policies and also paying $5.3 billion to the states. Meta’s legal chief described the agreement as “alignment between one of the major social-media platforms and regulators from all over the country about how to deal with this issue.”
Context – This settlement is primarily about the biggest social media platforms making some operational changes without the First Amendment headaches that come from government telling huge speech platforms how to operate. In the US, the legal and regulatory strategies of social media critics have focused on features like auto-play and push notifications to circumvent Sec. 230, the federal law that protects platforms from liability for third-party content, as well as the First Amendment. Several states have enacted laws regulating a similar set of platform features with teen users. Most have been blocked by federal judges for violating the First Amendment, although that trend is wavering as some appeals panels have waved away court precedents on First Amendment rights of teens. As this trial approached, Meta claimed that the states appeared to be claiming $1.4 trillion in damages and the AGs countered that it would be more like $200 billion. In that context, the actual funds over 10 years are obviously not the central point. Instead, we see social media platform changes agreed to by one of the giants that could have eventually been rejected by the US Supreme Court if imposed by government. Expect the others to follow.