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Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
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- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago“Shares of Meta rose 4.4% in pre-market trading.”
- scrumper 2mo agoA measure of the market's perception of the threat to Meta from these lawsuits. The uncertainty is over now, so the price goes back up. I'm interested in the settlement details - yes $16bn ok fine but any behavioral or structural changes? If it's just financial, nothing really changes... (EDIT: I see julianpye found some details in the WSJ, in another comment. There are some feature adjustments.)
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago> the settlement details “Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. That sum increases to $17.1 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. … The settlement will effectively force Meta to make major product changes for all U.S. users. The company agreed to interrupt endless scrolling and to impose two-hour daily time limits on Instagram and Facebook. To avoid addictive use and sleep interruptions, the company will limit usage between midnight and 6 a.m. and silence notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Meta will also limit features that psychologists link to negative social comparisons, such as beauty filters and a tallying of the ‘like’ button clicks. It will also strengthen age verification tools and parental controls” [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/technology/meta-settlement-social-media-addiction-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/technology/meta-settlemen...
- smugma 2mo agoShort-lived. Down to flat now.
- julianpye 2mo agoThe WSJ reports: "As part of the settlement agreement, Meta will also make sweeping changes to its services, Facebook and Instagram, including implementing a default two-hour time limit on its apps for users under 18." The question is of course if these limits are enforced and if they are shared across other services.
- kwanbix 2mo agoTwo hours is one hour too long if you ask me. This should be implemented also for adults. And non-avoidable.
- dmoose 2mo agoTwo hours is two hours too long.
- okdood64 2mo agoAdults can’t decide for themselves?
- voakbasda 2mo agoAdults should not be allowed to use heroin either.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- wildzzz 2mo agoThere isn't some magical switch that's flipped on your 18th birthday where you suddenly be pragmatic and make rational decisions. Even into your 20s, your brain is still developing. My mother is in her 60s and addicted to facebook and tiktok. It takes significant willpower to overcome addictions for most people. The brain of an 18 year old addicted to social media is mashing the "do the feel good thing" button just the same as a 17 year old.
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- asf1254 2mo ago1% of their market cap. I don't think we'll see someone with a net worth of $100,000 paying only a $1000 fine for harming children.
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- iamacyborg 2mo agoIf the handling of the Epstein files in the US is anything to go by, they’d get away scot free.
- ben_w 2mo agoMarket cap is generally the wrong measure. If you registered asf1254 Inc., and it was always just you, and it traded like Meta stocks trade, then "asf1254 Inc." would have a market cap ~6.2× whatever you're currently earning. i.e., if you earn $100k/year, you'd be "worth" $620k, and 1% of that would be a fine of $6200.
- cryptonym 2mo agoYou may earn 100k/y and have 10M real estate + 2M in bank. Why would you dumb down market cap to earnings? Anyway, 6K for harming children at that scale remains ridiculous.
- ben_w 2mo ago> Why would you dumb down market cap to earnings? The point is "Market cap is BS". > Anyway, 6K for harming children at that scale remains ridiculous. One person managing to harm children at this scale would likely get a penalty much smaller than $16 bn. Of course even "20-life" is a penalty much smaller than $16 bn, given the average American's lifetime earnings are around the $3m level, i.e. it would take 5000 mean lifetimes to repay the actual fine in the headline. It's nonsensical to scale down a %-of-wealth fee to one person without also considering that the offence would likely be smaller, and also as an independent consideration how difficult it would be for one person to commit the acts.
- kwanbix 2mo agoOnly to children? What about adults? Yes, I know we are supposed to be more responsible, but this things are made to be addicted and you don't realize until it is too late.
- _ink_ 2mo agoPay 25% from your 2025 profit for harming children since at least 2019 and be able to continue doing so. Sounds like a loss for society and a win for Meta.
- pier25 2mo agoWhy 2019? Facebook was already immensely popular a decade before that.
- _ink_ 2mo agoThis is when Frances Haugen joined Facebook and later leaked documents from that time. So while Facebook probably was harmful before that time, since then we have it on paper.
- oneneptune 2mo agoThe article outlines several changes Meta is having to implement that curbs the "and be able to continue doing so" argument a bit. That said, I wish these settlements included tobacco-esque requirements for ongoing funds to educate people. The tobacco settlement funds have been somewhat successful.
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- mscbuck 2mo agoSomehow I have no faith that these changes will be enforced, or appropriately drawn up by parties who actually have the knowledge to do so.
- bsimpson 2mo agoHave they? I know a lot of my peers went to college for free with the Millennium Scholarship. But so many young people vape now that it's becoming cool to smoke analog cigarettes. I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago. Many people that age now do.
- buellerbueller 2mo agoShame; the states involved has an opportunity for actual redress of harms, as opposed to just some campaign-worthy soundbyte.
- hugodan 2mo agostill feels like they got away easy for raping children's minds "Meta has long argued it could not have misled consumers about whether its services were addictive because "social media addiction" is not a recognized psychiatric condition." that's a nice escape hatch, considering that they are using all the tricks in the book (from online gambling, etc) and then some
- aprilthird2021 2mo agoThis is crazy, Meta is not solely responsible for people and kids having addiction to their phones (very similar if not identical to social media addiction). Gambling has regulations all the companies have to abide by. Social media and content platforms have nothing like that.
- forestrywat 2mo agoThey are a very, very, very significant contributor.
- Wolfbeta 2mo agoWho is paying for their internet access?
- forestrywat 2mo agoImagine being so out of touch that you think parents are generally equipped with the knowledge, features, and emotional capacity to manage their child's entire exposure to the internet in a way they cannot or will not circumvent. Laughable.
- techpression 2mo agoImagine thinking parents stand a snowballs chance in hell fighting against products explicitly made to exploit their children from companies spending billions on it. It’s like 0.00001% of parents that has those skills, if that.
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- 4ndrewl 2mo agoTable stakes. Just the cost of doing business. A bit like millionaires who park illegally because "it only cost $100 to park here, and my PA will do the admin"
- 4ndrewl 2mo agoI mean downvote all you like, but you know there's a team in place already doing their damnedest to define dark UX patterns to enable them to technically meet the restrictions.
- jbombadil 2mo agoWould be nice to be able to enable these features as an adult (stop autoplay videos and no algorithmic feed). Also, I’m surprised by the lack of enforcement to remove infinite scrolling.
- paulkrush 2mo agoI want sliders to control the feed.
- yodsanklai 2mo agoYes, and also if only I could disable shorts and the comment section in youtube.
- wildzzz 2mo agoIf you are on Android, you can use Revanced Manager or Morphe to patch the YouTube apk with all kinds of controls that include the ability to hide shorts and the comments section. Ad blocking works well too but using those patches requires a bit of a cat and mouse game since YouTube backend updates break things and require occasionally patching a newer apk version. You can also enable all of the client-side YouTube premium features.
- inigyou 2mo agoJust tell it you're underage
- ChicagoBoy11 2mo agoAs a school administrator, this is pretty disappointing. I've included slides showing a graphic of someone in a slot machine next to a screenshot of Instagram, and would do an activity where the children themselves drew connections of what they saw/knew. It was not difficult, and they hit it out of the park every time. The fact that the possible damages sought was over 200 billion, and this settlement clocks in at less than ten percent of that value plus "concessions" that really at this point are just tablestakes for them product itself to just be viable given the parent backlash against these things, is incredibly disappointing. They have cost people on the periphery of this A LOT more, and from a merely business proposition, the wanton disregard for safety in this case proved to be a smart business move. The lawsuit should have had a chilling effect on anyone trying to do anything similar lately, but that will not be the case.
- voakbasda 2mo agoIf anything this will embolden others to continue to pursue strategies of “do harm and pay the fine.” It is simply a cost for these sociopaths doing business, and our government has explicitly endorsed that status quo for decades.
- fivetenpen 2mo agoWhy not just ban the engagement algorithm completely. Adults are just as susceptible to addiction.
- jimmyjazz14 2mo agoWhy not just ban all non government approved speech, less we hear something that might hurt our feelings or make us engage in wrongthink.
- left-struck 2mo agoIt’s interesting that you bring up wrongthink. Banning free speech would be something like out of 1984, but what we have is far more subtle and insidious. A system that shows you only what it wants you to see, while tricking you into thinking you’re seeing what you want to see. Anyway, you can support free speech while hating this algorithm crap at the same time.
- jimmyjazz14 2mo agoThe system isn't tricking anyone, if an individual is not aware of how social media algorithms work that is due to willful ignorance (in the case of children that falls on the parents willful ignorance). I do personally believe banning the algorithms begins to fall into the realm of free speech regulation. I can hate the algorithm crap without thinking the government should regulate the internet.
- intended 2mo agoExcept that is an ideological position that has zip to do with the realities of how speech and ideas actuall move in online spaces. In the starkest of terms: Americans have to somehow reconcile faith in the power of an invidual's freedom of speech and the manipulation of the collective marketplace of ideas.
- tencentshill 2mo agoCorrect, the government can't ban mathematical algorithms. Just like they can't ban certain plants from being grown.
- dbbk 2mo agoI absolutely hate these settlement endings. The states were going to win.
- alpineman 2mo agoShameful behavior. Anyone working on making these products more addictive or otherwise benefitting from their negative impact on society and politics should take a long hard look in the mirror.
- paxys 2mo agoFor context Meta had $61.8 billion revenue and $15.85 billion net income in Q2 2026. So this entire “existential threat” of teenage safety amounts to one bad quarter for the company, and they will continue on unscathed.
- itsryanlenk 2mo agoAs long as you have enough money to throw billion dollar darts at a trillion dollar dart board you're gonna skate out cleanly every time. There's a bigger problem here and everyone knows it.
- gib444 2mo agoPocket change
- datakan 2mo agoWho gets the money?
- TheBigSalad 2mo agoWell they're suing meta on behalf of the children. So obviously the children will be getting the money. Right? Right?
- electriclove 2mo agoYup, exactly!
- eviks 2mo agoDoesn't matter as long as the children are safe!
- stego-tech 2mo agoSo a literal slap on the wrist that doesn’t discourage or stop the actually harmful behavior. Look, I get that certain demographics are terrified of another Arthur Andersen-esque collapse of a firm, but if we don’t punish companies to the point of possible insolvency, then we’re creating a moral hazard wherein more companies will continue engaging in harmful behavior because they know they won’t ever be held properly accountable. If we actually harmed (or even bankrupted) Meta with a suitable fine relative to the harms inflicted, you’d see the wider social media industry (and adjacent tech companies) clean up their shit really fucking fast to avoid a similar fate.
- tftr 2mo agoWhat do you do about people who make their livelihoods on these platforms? Personally idgaf about them - I feel they contribute. But I want to know what you think.
- stego-tech 2mo agoIt sucks. On the one hand, I think destroying Meta and social media in its current form would be a net good; same with fossil fuel companies. Though you raise an issue (“what about folks whose livelihoods depend on the harm perpetuated”) rather than reject the premise using such reasoning, which is the absolute right attitude to have. It’s easy to sit on my high horse and tut-tut folks reliant on Facebook Marketplace or Gas Station Convenience Store shifts for their livelihoods, but that’s not helping jack shit. Personally, I believe part of the punishment should be leveraging the fines or damages collected to build social support systems for genuine victims - which includes working class folks who had to choose between starving/homelessness or survival. I lack the policy expertise to make specific pitches, but we do need to keep those folks in mind as a means of learning from Arthur Andersen and Enron: punish those creating the harm, while helping those who were casualties of the collapse but not directly complicit themselves. It’s hard. It’s complex. Some folks will fall through the gaps due to our abysmal social safety nets. That being said, those numbers are infinitely smaller than the folks harmed by social media in its current form, and thus the trade is a net good. Using this new problem to justify not addressing the current one is the worst move we could make.
- Ekaros 2mo agoBusiness as usual. The ownership class will always win. At this point I really doubt we will ever get anything that isn't either small payment relatively or something they can't weasel out of.
- iso1631 2mo agoIsn't this just the EU wanting to tax big american businesses?
- Ekaros 2mo agoHere it is states of USA wanting to tax corporation not incorporated in them. So pure greed.
- jcmoscon 2mo agoI think worse than social media nowadays is youtube shorts. That thing is so addictive to kids. I wish there was a way to delete shorts from youtube and have only long form videos available in the app.
- myko 2mo ago100%, Shorts are an abomination.
- DamnInteresting 2mo agoAgreed, YouTube Shorts and similar pap (e.g., Tik Tok) seem corrosive to a developing mind...the mindless content, automatic looping, serving up one shallow video after another. It's no wonder the tech CEOs insulate their own kids from this stuff[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/technology/silicon-valley-tech-fans-children.html?unlocked_article_code=1.61A.lpsn.nwXztvHKbIOK https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/technology/silicon-valley...
- yodsanklai 2mo agoExactly. And also a way to opt-out of the comment section. It's hard for me to resist looking at the comments, and sometimes commenting.
- Der_Einzige 2mo agoDelete your HN!
- yodsanklai 2mo agoYoutube comments is a junkyard compared to HN.
- Helloworldboy 2mo ago[dead]
- BoostandEthanol 2mo ago
- Devasta 2mo agoAnything that doesn't have Zuckerberg and the rest of the top brass in a gulag the rest of their lives doesn't go far enough.
- DivingForGold 2mo agoZUCK, PUBLIC ENEMY #1
- hax0ron3 2mo agoSo if I write a book that your kid just can't stop reading it over and over again because I deliberately made it compulsively re-readable, and then your kid develops some kind of issues because my book is so interesting to him, you can sue me and win? I don't like that idea. Personally, I value free speech more than some supposed "harms" done to children by content. Content that they can easily stop consuming by just closing the app.
- rlpb 2mo agoIt's established that exposing children to bad things causes harm. This isn't specific to technology. "Free speech" isn't a concept that applies to the exposure of harmful speech to children.
- SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago"Free speech" is definitely a concept that applies to the exposure of harmful speech to children. That's why there's no law on the topic; the Child Online Protection Act was overturned, and organizations like the EFF have been opposing recent attempts (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/house-passed-kids-act-senate-should-reject-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/house-passed-kids-act-...) to pass a new one.
- 65 2mo agoI agree, I should be allowed to give children my amazing crystal meth, it's such an untapped market.
- Ajedi32 2mo agoThere's a law against that. There's currently no law against making a website so fun that kids will waste all their time playing with it if their parents let them.
- 65 2mo agoAnd how did we create the law against giving children crystal meth in the first place? At a certain point in time, there was no law against it.
- skizm 2mo agoThe other big tech companies were able to keep their settlement amounts private, since they settled before this case went to court. I wonder how their settlements compare. I bet they were much smaller given Meta took an actual L in court, they probably had less leverage when negotiating this number.
- foolinaround 2mo agowho receives (or has received) actual payments ( other than the lawyers)? I think we need some service that is able to break this out
- webo 2mo agothis is what is most interesting to me as well. does any of this actually go towards helping the impacted children and families? >The settlement resolves claims brought by 29 U.S. states, and will end a federal trial that had been one of the highest-profile tests yet of allegations that social media companies harmed young users. >Wednesday's settlement also resolves lawsuits by California, Illinois, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., over privacy claims related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the consulting firm collected personal data of millions of Facebook users. Those states will receive $459.3 million to resolve those lawsuits.
- xvxvx 2mo agoI’m beyond sick of how this country operates. This is small potatoes for Meta and stops the $1T+ lawsuit, which would have had an actual impact on these scumbags. Time and time again it’s the same story: the Protestant worship of money and wealth at the expense of others. If it makes money then it’s a blessing from God, and thus cannot be evil. Sorry, Americans, but your children will be mind raped with social media and pornography to grow the GDP. Don’t put up a fight: the government has their back. And an army.
- electriclove 2mo agoProtestant? that's a cute misdirection
- gurumeditations 2mo agoYou puritans are obsessed with porn. If you don’t like jerking off, then don’t! Hate yourself and leave the rest of us alone. You’re not protecting kids or anyone else with your moral panic.
- Der_Einzige 2mo agoYup. Who brought circumcison into this country and why? Oh yeah, mad as hell conservatives who would literally mutilate their children all because gasp they might experience a bit of that forbidden, evil, no good, pleasure. And after all, we are all sinners in a world of an angry god… Fuck WASPs.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- okokwhatever 2mo agoOk, but how the kids will recover from all this harm? Is this money gonna be used correctly for once?
- DivingForGold 2mo agoZuck, PUBLIC ENEMY #1
- mandeepj 2mo agoFrom $1.2T lawsuit, they settled for $16.6B; Meta got quite a bargain
- jsw97 2mo ago1% of market cap does not feel right for this. I guess to the general public $16 billion sounds like a lot.
- Varelion 2mo agoI am so sick of corporations getting slaps no the wrist for these heinous crimes. Why is there no fucking justice in this god damn country?
- Gualdrapo 2mo agoA few days ago I learned guerrilla dissent groups here in Colombia were using Facebook and Tiktok to target children towards joining them. $16.68B is too little for them.
- inigyou 2mo agoOh no, not dissent! We can't have the children dissenting!
- shepardrtc 2mo agoMeta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can be wonderful, but monetizing that or adding Like counts to gamify it is very damaging to people. This idea that everyone should know better and take a ideological stand against some dumb app is ridiculous. Life can be hard at times, and these apps manipulated that.
- jjulius 2mo ago>Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put an outsized emphases on such affirmation, whether it's reputation, status, belonging, approval, prestige, attractiveness, respectability, yadda yadda yadda. Consumer culture and mass media were already firmly entrenched and doing a damn good job of turning those into visible measures of personal worth in the form of wealth, possessions, beauty standards, popularity, professional success, celebrity... I could go on and on. Meta just put a big ol' bright spotlight on the worst aspects that we were already amplifying, and perhaps sped-run that amplification.
- runarberg 2mo agoThis is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. And I personally find it to be a very lame excuse. Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malicious actions.
- jjulius 2mo ago>This is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. This is a disingenuous read of my comment. >Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malevolent actions. On this we absolutely agree, especially in regards to Meta. Nothing in life is that black and white, and there's nuance - to ignore our culture's outsized desire for things like that as a part of what pre-disposes us to being addicted to Meta/et al's bullshit is a fallacy.
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- joering2 2mo ago$16.6B versus $1.4T market cap (1.17%). So basically rob a bank of $100 million dollars, on your way out give $1.1 million to cops and you are free to go with the rest.
- voakbasda 2mo agoYes. This has been demonstrated as a viable strategy more times than I can count.
- paxys 2mo agoIt’s ridiculous that so many issues affecting this country over the last two decades can be traced to the inability of Congress to pass laws.
- NalNezumi 2mo ago>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content So meta won. The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media. Let me remove infinite scroll on Instagram and don't show me things I have explicitly followed on Facebook. And do this setting by default and a cigarette like warning pop-up when you try to enable the algorithms. (I know you can do this with custom apps and I'm doing that but you have no clue how many non tech people beg me to share how and then cop out when they learn you have to download custom apk. Just add these functionalities as an default )
- JKCalhoun 2mo ago"So meta won." Unless we make sure in print to specify "Meta, the company found to have harmed children, …".
- inigyou 2mo agoSo what? Media can write "Donald Trump, the confirmed child rapist and embezzler" but it won't actually make anyone stop liking him.
- Helloworldboy 2mo ago[dead]
- phyzix5761 2mo agoAs someone who doesn't use social media please explain. Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?
- pirates 2mo agoI don’t understand either. Usually someone responds with something like “the local <whatever> only posts updates on <app> so what choice do I have” or something to do with peer pressure or FOMO. I don’t doubt that people deal with those problems but they seem like better ones to have. But it seems like a lot of people just cannot imagine living without the apps anymore.
- ApolloFortyNine 2mo ago>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content. Even if we assume children don't find a way around this, they will simply switch to a different social media app after their two hours are up, or switch to an app that doesn't have the two hour limit at all. This is clearly a rule that would have to be mandated by the government, or perhaps parental controls on their devices (not sure why parenting was ruled out here apparently). Same with whatever opinions people have on an algorithm showing you content you'd enjoy, which has always been the goal of media since the concept of a magazine was created, they just didn't have the right tools available. It also will only punish kids who actually gave their age no? That's not actually required (yet) to sign up for a social media app. I was probably 9 when I started clicking a random year for my age when signing up. Doesn't take you long to figure out you have to jump through hoops when your honest. Really I have no idea what this case accomplished besides being a tax on a successful company.
- Hugsbox 2mo agoI could see unregulated platforms blowing up, which would directly expose minors to far worse. Like imagine if they all flock to 4chan, or similar.
- fdgfikgfv 2mo ago4chan doesn’t use tricks to get people addicted to their feed. Similarly, most platforms cannot hire the smartest people to build addictive algorithms. The danger is much lower.
- wasdly 2mo ago4chan doesn’t rely on likes or upvotes, and posts are ostensibly "anonymous" (not attached to a persistent identity). Instead, users earn their feel-good chemicals by the amount of attention they can generate, positive or negative, as measured in number of replies or impact on board culture. Threads themselves are kept alive based on how often they receive a reply relative to their peers, with each board having a set capacity for active threads; the least popular threads are quickly pruned out of existence. This system encourages gamifying replies by creating content that elicits strong fear, anger, or excitement responses, or opinions or media so shocking that it’s impossible not to interact with them. Combined with a lax free-speech policy, you get a website that reinforces the nastiest, most unsanitized content, often far-removed from reality, which can exacerbate mental illness or depression among vulnerable populations. While other social media platforms also encourage their creators to exploit fear, anger, or excitement, leaning too heavily on emotionality without being acceptable to your audience can cause your post to be buried or underperform. Emotional engagement is only one factor in success, alongside the like-to-dislike ratio, watch time, creator reputation, and palatability to advertisers. If you post, e.g., an emotionally provocative YouTube video that completely dismantles your audience’s preexisting conception of you (a leftist posting a right-wing video), the video will likely be dislike-bombed and thus unable to climb very far in the algorithm, while your reputation will be tarnished among your hardcore fans. Even on a more pseudo-anonymous platform like Reddit, going too far against the grain of a subreddit will get your post downvoted and hidden from anyone not sorting by new, and probably deleted by the mods. 4chan doesn’t have these issues. Even if you are outside the Overton window of a specific board, as long as the post has enough substance to fuel outrage (there is a difference between cheap outrage and more visceral, long-lasting outrage that can only be created by someone intimately familiar with the subject), your post can still be successful, although you will be bombarded with racial slurs and death threats. It’s ragebait in its purest form. Disclaimer: I have never posted on 4chan and these are just my observations from lurking.
- tedggh 2mo agoSo harming kids has an official price tag now, $17B. That’s about $8 for every kid in the world.
- meric_ 2mo agoI don't understand. Why is meta paying 70% while Google tiktok etc are paying 15-30% Are these not the same apps
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- pier25 2mo agoBasically a slap on the wrist.
- aplummer 2mo agoI can’t wait for the equal coal reckoning. What is it 20k direct deaths a year? 2 million early deaths? The Great Barrier Reef 100% dead after this El Niño. A deliberate cover up of the science? In a top 10 harmful corporation list meta wouldn’t make my cut.
- yodsanklai 2mo agoMy pet peeves are junk food corporations. Companies like Mac Donald's or Coca Cola have been extremely damaging in terms of public health. And the level of marketing they use to feed people (especially kids) their poison is insane. I know it's pretty unpopular as it can be seen by some as an attack on US culture, but definitely more damaging than Meta in my opinion.
- garbawarb 2mo agoFast food and snack companies are the absolute masters of marketing to children. If the United States really cared they'd put a blanket ban on advertising to children like some jurisdictions (Quebec) have done.
- phatfish 2mo agoIn the UK there are fairly strong rules against advertising junk food to kids. Of course these are all being subverted on social media because of Meta et al. being uncooperative and pretending they can't identify kids (they know the real age of most accounts even without having to do ID checks).
- aplummer 2mo agoCompletely agree. Talk about designing for addicted kids
- bearjaws 2mo agoNeeds a 0 added, $160B feels fair. Mesothelioma was $35B in 90s money, so about 3x that today. Companies keep getting away with this "cost of doing business" fines, the justice department keeps failing at its duties. The fines either need to wipe out these companies to the point the share holders hold the leadership accountable or nothing will change.
- jimmyjazz14 2mo agoThe difference is asbestos clearly and directly caused harm, the social media addiction stuff stand on pretty dubious science to say the least.
- bearjaws 2mo agoThe problem wasn't as simple as it caused harm, it was the companies knew it caused harm and did nothing. Just like how Meta, it's staff and leadership all knew they were making decisions that harmed people, and did nothing to stop it while profiting immensely.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2mo agoTo be fair, aesbestos makers too knew and didn't stop selling it.
- inigyou 2mo agoSo do sodium hydroxide makers, they know it's toxic and they still don't stop selling it.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2mo agoIt's not the same. Aesbestos makers knew, their customers didn't, and they actively fought against the customers knowing it. Whereas NaOH makers know and go as far as writing it on the packaging.
- 2mo ago
- madduci 2mo agoSo the money goes to families with children? Or is it going to fund other harming activities?
- zer00eyz 2mo agoHey meta, watch my kids for me. I raised my kids with devices. They hate social media for the most part, and participate in it begrudgingly. All meta had to do to avoid this was run the occasional "you have been doom scrolling for 20 minutes, do you know what your kid is doing on social media" ad's and the problem would have been solved (for them). But parents would have to own their own social media addiction issues - Im reminded again of the old "I learned it by watching you" ad... The earlier papers on the risk here date back to 2012. You can go all the way back to myspace and the Megan Meier case (2006) to know how things were going to turn out for kids, online, unattended. Great meta pays the fine. In 20 years this crop of kids will, as an outcome of therapy, go "no contact" with their parents, who refuse to own up to doing a bad job raising them with unfettered access to social media.
- tiborsaas 2mo agoMeanwhile they burned $80B on building the Metaverse :)
- newtwentysix 2mo ago16.68 Billion over a period of ten years. that is pocket change for the company. cut some jobs, reduce some snacks, push more ads. done.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- pavlov 2mo agoMeta stock price is up, so the market thinks paying only $16.7 billion is a win.
- nilshauk 2mo ago"just cost of doing business." - some Meta boardroom.
- jimmyjazz14 2mo agoThere is part of me who would love to see the style of internet created by companies like Meta regulated out of existence but the logical part of my mind recognizes this could lead to things like age verification laws, online surveillance and other much worse government controls over the internet.
- roosterIllusi0n 2mo agoWe really need to elect people who won't settle cases like this and instead go for a verdict.
- TheBigSalad 2mo agoJust a ridiculous cash grab
- bastard_op 2mo agoPay the fine, go back to exploiting humanity. Its not enough. Shut them down.
- dfilppi 2mo ago[dead]
- nicechianti 2mo ago[dead]
- connor11528 2mo agothe best remedy for abuses of big tech is to break them up, actually creating the conditions for a more free market rather one run oligopolies.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoThe amount is too small, as usual, and is just a slightly annoying cost of doing business.
- toofy 2mo agoa few weeks ago i was visiting my parents and caught a little bit of a documentary they had on. it all became clear as day. apparently in the 70s used car salesmen would manipulate the odometers in cars they were selling to make the cars appear to have really low mileage. they would also do other random stuff like put saw dust in the transmission to hide any kind of knocking noises. the media started doing investigations into this which led to laws making those kind of things illegal. they had tons of interviews with various owners of the car lot chains who were eventually found guilty of things like rolling back odometers. and every single one of them sounded sleazy and confident. every single one of these guys who were caught red handed blamed the buyers saying things like: “it’s not my fault they bought a shit car.” we allowed a bunch of greasy slimey used car salesmen to take over. slimey used car salesmen in quarter-zips who sound confident.
- sunjain 2mo agoSolution is not to have another app that is built on likes, nor on feeds. We have seen, even for adults the apps built to constrain the use of social media apps and devices are ineffective. Only way forward is to create opportunities for real time, conversations that are not chat based. It has also shown that people are less mean, when interacting in real time with a human as opposed to writing a short comment. Especially in US, where defaults are system are creating more walls between people, instead of creating more opportunities to interact in real time. People sit in car, from there isolated single family homes, and go to their destination mostly that way. There is no spontaneous opportunities to mingle with the neighbors, nor with new people at train stations or at town square. I built https://tosynch.com https://tosynch.com to do one thing, and one thing only : reconnect with friends and meet often. No likes, no feeds, no ads, no noisy notifications, setup and forget.
- bsimpson 2mo agoIt's kind of funny that Facebook tried to launder its brand by renaming itself Meta, and its vile reputation is haunting that brand now too. New name is so abstract is sounds vaguely dystopian. Not sure that it matters though, because Instagram and WhatsApp are still in everyone's pockets. Even in hippie circles, they're almost mandatory to stay connected.
- rpaik 2mo agoAnd even open source software such as OpenClaw encourages people to use WhatsApp and it's hard to escape.
- seydor 2mo ago> Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children Nothing is more addicting than regular intermittent rewards. They are literally not changing anything
- mv4 2mo agoI remember when I was working at Meta, I was offered a "high impact" opportunity to work on youth products. Nope.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- lestertomlin 2mo agolol this is pretty pathetic. Chump change. Good job US “justice system”
- nrmitchi 2mo agoMy concern about this isn't about the money. Frankly, no amount would actually satisfy everyone, and even an even-more-comically-large number won't materially impact Facebook (sorry, Meta). My concerns are: 1. This is an agreed settlement w/ only Meta. This no impact on YouTube, TikTok, etc, and regulators can't point at this and say "Well Meta did it, you have to to!". This isn't a law, it's a handshake[0]. 2. Will (or can) this be applicable to adults. If the implementation exists, adults should be able to opt in to it as well. Adults are also subject to addiction and social harms. 3. These restrictions feel like they're about 20 seconds away from being sidestepped by the first teenager that discovers they can make multiple instagram accounts and/or use multiple devices. [0] This sentence sounds like Claude but I promise I wrote this myself.
- jimnotgym 2mo agoGreat, now the rest of the world needs to sue them too
- rvz 2mo agoImagine still believing that working at a insidious company such as Meta is a "badge of honour" after knowing that they did this for decades.
- alightsoul 2mo agoCan they be sued again, once psychologists agree to recognize social media addiction and algorithmic addiction as conditions on the DSM 5?
- ninalanyon 2mo agoFinancial settlements of what should be criminal cases should not be allowed. Hundreds or thousands of people at Meta should instead be jailed. If we assume that the median income for a Meta employee/board member is 100 kUSD then that 16 GUSD is 160 000 man years. 16 000 people should go to jail for 10 years instead. And that should include everyone at the top.
- ghm2199 2mo agoTechnically does this not create a problem for their EPS because of the poor free cash flow? Current market consensus is $81B in Net Income for the year but a -$6.7B cashflow for 2026[1]. But the stock is up 1%. So, is the -$12B is priced in(somehow)? [1](https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/META-PLATFORMS-INC-41645324/finances https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/META-PLATFORMS-IN...)
- manquer 2mo agoIt is over 10 years, so cash flow impact is ~1.8b per year if it was equal installments. Given that 30% is conditional on TikTok and YouTube agreeing to similar controls and paying similar amounts and other payment terms the number might be even lower for 2026. Share prices are weakly correlated to news events anyway, if you ask the professionals they would say it was already "priced in" that is why a news event is not moving the stock when it doesn't move, and when it does move they will it is news event causing the move.
- josephwegner 2mo ago> The company said 30% of that amount — about $5.3 billion — will be released to states only if rivals YouTube and TikTok meet two conditions: implementing similar safety features, including a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block and age-assurance measures; and paying the same amount, split between the two companies. This is pretty shady. The $17B figure is much less impressive when a huge chunk of it is hinged on competitors choosing to hurt their business.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- darkwizard42 2mo agoFor what its worth, if you believe Meta's product does do this damage, the other products which do similar things should also abide by it. It helps simultaneously "level the playing field" but also protects consumers. If the courts stated ruling is hinged on consumer protection then this seems fair. Any competitor which doesn't follow suit is likely opening themselves up to a similar lawsuit which would cost a similar order of magnitude of damages (so it is in the interest of the competitors to do take these actions)
- shaftway 2mo agoIt's basically contingent on the AGs suing those companies as well. > and paying the same amount, split between the two companies. So it's a bucket of crabs
- seizethecheese 2mo agoThe discussion here would be unchanged if only the non-contingent portion were reported ($11.7B).
- shdh 2mo agoMinors should just be banned from social media
- slibhb 2mo agoIt's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam. The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong correlation. Studies with an intervention are mixed/the effect isn't large. Extreme and compulsive social media use is bad, but it's almost maybe always a symptom rather than a cause. I saw the trailer for the new Facebook movie last weekend. It's comical really; first people blamed Facebook for the 2016 election and now for their kids being depressed. It's classic scapegoating. What makes this worse is the irony: in the name of protecting children, we're going to further reduce their freedom. And if there is single largest cause of children being depressed, I'd bet on "lack of freedom" over "social media use".
- expedition32 2mo agoSociety is not some science experiment that you can run for 20 years and hit the reset button.
- contagiousflow 2mo agoWould you like to link to these studies?
- tsss 2mo agoI know that it's hurting me. Hard to imagine that children are any less affected by it.
- CJefferson 2mo agoThis is completely different to my experience and my reading of the research. Please link me to any of this research you are talking about.
- slibhb 2mo agoMeta-analysis, very large, shows small correlation between unhappiness and social media use: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2819781 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Large AU observational study. Moderate social media use correlates to the happiest kids, high use and no use correlates to unhappiness: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2843720 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst... Swedish obervational study, after adjusting the data there was no correlation: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/fulltext https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/full... I can't find the specific inverventional study I mentioned. As I recall, it was mixed but possibly I remembered wrongly. Some studies do show a significant correlation between unhappiness and social media use, but causation has not been established and the bigger, better done studies have weaker correlations. People believe in causation because it suits their bias against social media. I dislike social media but I doubt it's harmful. This substack summarizes my view on what really makes children unhappy: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 (school). I'd guess that lack of freedom is what makes school so awful; modern schools are like little totalitarian states, where every minute of your day is accounted for and there is no privacy.
- JMiao 2mo agolol ad money be good
- lacoolj 2mo agoLink is paywalled Is this a different case from the $1.5 trillion suit against them?
- juujian 2mo ago> pay a maximum $16.68 billion Why "a maximum". Do can we expect that in practice it will be much less?
- darkwizard42 2mo agoSome payment is withheld unless competitors (Youtube, TikTok) take specific actions as well.
- loeg 2mo agoMeta's statement claims $18B. Not sure where Reuters is getting $16.68B from. https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agreement-with-state-attorneys-general-supporting-teens/ https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agreement-with-state-attor...
- pcarolan 2mo agoHonest question. Who got to decide to accept this decision on behalf of state and federal citizens? This seems performative rather than punitive and doesn’t seem to match the harm.
- darkwizard42 2mo agoThe prosecutors representing the justice departments of states of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey
- lenerdenator 2mo agoFile more suits, then. $17 billion is nothing. Should have been more like $500 billion.
- gorgoiler 2mo agoI remember, vaguely*, a British polemicist once tilting at the eco-populist demons-du-jour by saying “it’s not carrier bags that are the problem, it’s supermarkets, and it’s not SUVs destroying the plant, it’s cars.” In that spirit, it’s not Facebook that’s crippling children’s brains, it is phones and the apps that run on them. OLEDs, Retina, 120+Hz, infinite scroll, algorithmic content, and 10h battery life are all just as much to blame as Instagram stories. It’s like recognizing over-fishing is a crisis which needs to be tackled and then suing McDonalds because they sell a lot of Filets-o-Fish. If we were to do something then we could hold our leaders accountable for regulating all of this, but there’s such an enormous conflict of interest there (namely that they’d be regulating the golden goose that gives them so much tax revenue and economic investment) that I long gave up hope they’d play it by the book. * Rod Liddell? Giles Fraser? Nick Ferrari?
- michael0church 2mo ago[dead]
- inigyou 2mo agoI really don't see how high quality displays are the problem.
- yalogin 2mo agoMeta’s stock gained 32billion in value just today on the news. So it’s not even noticeable for them
- freetanga 2mo agoDisgusting. A drop in a bucket, quickly recovered via tax breaks, government spending, etc. Meta employees should be accountable for this. And stock buyers too. You could choose to work elsewhere. You could choose to invest in something else. Many here are shocked when a company does not observe GNU licensing, but are OK working, using or investing in such an evil organization.
- Artoooooor 2mo agoThat cases should end with prison sentences, not financial settlements.
- penguin_booze 2mo agoYou think the rich will let that happen?
- roscas 2mo agoMeta pays smartphone makers to pre-install the Facebook app. And 3 more hidden services. Don't just remove the FB app, you need to remove all from FB because they will still continue to follow you.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe only good smartphone firmware is GrapheneOS. And LineageOS.
- Simboo 2mo agoNo, no, no we’ve got this all wrong! Courts are meant to change laws not charge fees. 17B is cheap compared to changing the laws being exploited. META won this one hands down.
- akagusu 2mo agoThis is so cheap to them. Why should they comply with the law when it is so cheap to them not doing so?
- jstummbillig 2mo agoI find it fascinating how spotty the evidence around "Social Media" causing harm seems to be (as opposed to: harm happening on social media because that is just where kids are now), yet how viscerally so many people seem to agree that it must be the case. Why is that?
- jonhohle 2mo agoSo should information be free to everyone or do we need to protect children from things they are not developmentally able to handle yet? It seems like a lot of the people praising this decision think the same thing is evil when applied in other contexts.
- phatfish 2mo agoThe question is, if social media isn't regulated or banned for children. Why are all the other thing we don't let children do still regulated/banned. If a 6 year old can scroll TikTok surely they should be allowed to get a couple of shots at the bar?
- dbgrman 2mo agofrom meta's own statement: "The majority of the terms are required to remain in place for 10 years, but our Time Limit and Night Mode features will start with a five-year commitment. However, if industry peers sign on to the agreement, it will both extend this commitment to 10 years and prompt stronger default limits — reducing the Daily Limit to one hour per app and expanding Night Mode hours to 10:00 PM–7:00 AM (up from midnight–6:00 AM)." I'm at loss for words at how shitty this paragraph reads. If anyone has any hope that Meta (and the rest) are even slightest concerned about the problem at hand (mental health of children), then they're very dim. Meta literally goals on creating high-quality teen producers and consumers. Every single experiment, every single project is optimizing for that. At least now its clear that behind the fancy marketing, its all "just business" for them and if they could, they'd sell the kids' soul to create "more shareholder value"
- jtfrench 2mo agoLifeLog wins again.
- laptoprabbit 2mo agoam I taking crazy pills, or does Productive Pauses seem like a feature to make someone scroll more? Exhibit G from the settlement doc [1] [1] https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/23-05448-ecf-572-1-exhibit-1-mdl-consent-judgment-final-settlment-agreement-fully-executed.pdf https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/23-05...
- jazzpush2 2mo agoShame on anyone working there in 2026.
- sensanaty 2mo agoPathetic and toothless. Zuckerberg and all the scum like him should be getting all of their ill-gotten assets seized and his insides rearranged inside some maximum security prison, not this pathetic bullshit.
- clove 2mo ago[dead]
- fivetenpen 2mo agoBan engagement algorithms already, its been terrible for society
- pull_my_finger 2mo agoSquinting real hard to see a silver lining here, but when a settlement is reached, does that mean they can be tried again for the same thing? If the states can't, can individuals try their own class action suit?
- Danox 2mo agoSo Zuckerberg avoids going away to a re-education camp?
- algo314 2mo agoWhat about damage to done to kids who are not Americans? As in 18B goes to the American state govts.
- inigyou 2mo agoThey have to sue for that damage. This suit is about the damage to Americans because that's what the plaintiffs asked for
- martin82 2mo agoI think the damage that Meta has done not only to children, but to all human beings alive and online today, cannot be put into monetary terms. Meta should be destroyed and forced to stop all operations immediately. I think it would be quite an interesting wake-up call when we would then realize that... nothing of value was lost and the world will just go on - just a little bit saner and happier.