Meta will pay up to $17.1 billion over 10 years — and implement broad child-safety reforms on Instagram and Facebook — under a nationwide settlement with 26 state attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta. The agreement, subject to court approval, resolves claims by the state AGs that Meta 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. Variety has reached out to Meta for comment.
The case, brought by a group of 29 states, was co-led by California’s Bonta — who is currently locked in a standoff with Paramount over an antitrust suit seeking to block its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover — and AGs from Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky. The settlement comes after the trial in the case began on Aug. 18 in the U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of California. California alone will receive $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion from Meta if the settlement is approved by the court. The focus of this case was to protect our kids — stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them against harmful features, implementing age assurance technology, and more.
Today’s action is an important step forward and I welcome Meta’s decision to accept responsibility and to collaborate with the multistate coalition to protect kids who deserve better.” The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including: Both the implementation and effectiveness of the features required under the settlement will be “regularly assessed” by an independent auditor and the settling states. Beginning in 2021, the state attorneys general across the U.S. launched an investigation into the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After finding that Meta “designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents,” the 29 AGs in 2023 sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit.
The settlement announced Wednesday resolves those cases, including the states’ ongoing trial in federal court in Oakland, and claims by the other settling states and territories. The settlement also separately resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, to garner support for political candidates leading up to the 2016 election. The attorneys general participating in the settlement are from: Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
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