Meta Paid $17B – Gets to Write Safety Rules for Other SocMedia Platform

Meta has settled a years-long child safety lawsuit brought by 52 state and local attorneys general, with the consent judgment capping the total at $16,680,647,753.21 and Meta's press release rounding to approximately $18 billion. As part of the settlement, Meta will implement a variety of child safety changes to its platforms and will "encourage" YouTube and TikTok to enable the same safety features—though, bizarrely, if those platforms comply, Meta will have to pay more.

The settlement structure is notable because it avoids the First Amendment problems that would arise if a government directly mandated these feature changes. By framing them as a settlement, the courts may now need to examine whether Meta's choices—which it could have made freely on its own—have become "state action" that implicates the First Amendment.

Civil liberties groups have strongly criticized the deal. The EFF warns that young users will have less access to Meta products and a lesser ability to exercise rights to speak, access information, associate, and play. The settlement embeds age assurance into every product, mandating collection of even more personal information from users of all ages, enshrining Meta's harmful surveillance into law, compromising privacy and anonymity, and increasing exposure to data breaches and government data requests. The EFF also notes that data minimization and security measures do not prevent states from using data collected under the agreement for other law enforcement purposes, such as criminal investigations of abortions or gender-affirming care.

Fight for the Future similarly argues that while Big Tech harms kids through its business practices, more censorship, age-gating, and surveillance at the hands of the same companies is not the answer. They warn that online ID checks put vital information behind age-gates, suppress teenagers' right to speak, and expose all users to further data collection, hacking, and leaks.