AG Marshall announces historic settlement with Meta Platforms Inc.
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Special to the News
On Wednesday Attorney General Steve Marshall announced a landmark $117,345,409 settlement with Meta Platforms Inc.
In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. The agreement resolves claims by 47 states and D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things.
This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens. At $17.1 billion nationwide, this is the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
“This settlement sends a clear message that Alabama will hold big tech accountable when it fails to protect our children online. Meta will pay millions of dollars to Alabama and has taken a critical step toward comprehensive reforms for youth safety. We will continue to monitor Meta to ensure compliance with the terms set forth in the settlement, as well as to close off any loopholes predators and other bad actors might try to exploit,” Attorney General Marshall said.
The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:
- Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
- “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.
- Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
- Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
- Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders and content related to suicide and self-harm.
- Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
- Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
- Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
These groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook are more significant and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court. And perhaps most importantly, this settlement represents a down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.
This settlement marks the latest victory in a broader effort by the Attorney General’s Office to hold technology companies and social media platforms accountable for putting Alabama consumers, particularly children, at risk.
Earlier this year, Marshall announced a first-in-the nation settlement with Roblox that requires stronger protections for children on the online gaming platform and secured $12 million in funding for school resource officers.
Last year he sued TikTok, alleging that it was designed to addict children and that the company misled parents about its safety. That case is set for trial in September, positioning Alabama to become the first state in the nation to take TikTok to trial.
Earlier this week, Marshall also announced an investigation into OpenAI seeking accountability and understanding of the vulnerabilities that permitted its AI model to hack another American AI company unprompted.
Attorney General Marshall thanked Civil and Consumer Protection divisions for their tireless work on achieving this historic settlement. As this matter was handled in house, 100 percent of the settlement amount will go to the State of Alabama.