Meta reached a settlement with a group of 29 U.S. state attorneys general, thus avoiding the continuation of a child online safety trial that could have resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in fines. The agreement, which settles the claims made by a total of 47 states and several American districts and territories, provides for the payment of 17.1 billion dollars over ten years, in addition to a series of operational commitments on the group’s platforms.
The central point of the agreement concerns the verification of the age of users. Meta will have to develop an age assurance standard subjected to independent tests, with a false positive rate that cannot exceed 10% for the 16-17 year age group and 3% for the 13-15 year age group. The company also undertakes to link accounts belonging to the same person, to prevent the new rules from being circumvented by creating multiple profiles, and to guarantee an appeal procedure for users. Anyone who claims to be over 18 but does not complete verification within two weeks will have their account placed under restrictions designed to limit contact from potential malicious adults, and will receive content consistent with “age-appropriate experiences.”
In terms of daily use, minors will be able to deactivate personalized feeds based on the recommendation algorithm, while push notifications will be suspended by default between 10pm and 7am, unless otherwise indicated by their parents, and also during school hours. Meta will also introduce a two-hour per day limit on overall use of its apps, with exceptions for messaging and “longform” content, as well as “productive breaks” after 60 and 90 minutes of cumulative use and an explicit warning after the first 15 minutes of a session. Among other measures, the company will deactivate filters that simulate aesthetic procedures for teenagers and will hide the like count, to reduce the pressure of social comparison. Finally, Meta undertakes not to make false or misleading statements about the effectiveness of its security tools.
Of the total 17.1 billion, 5.3 billion will remain conditional: Meta will pay them only if YouTube and TikTok also introduce similar daily time limits and pay the States an equivalent amount. It’s a clause that reflects a broader lobbying strategy: Meta has long lobbied state lawmakers and Congress in an effort to extend age verification requirements to competitors.
Meta’s legal director, CJ Mahoney, commented on the agreement by underlining that the new commitments on time limits, night mode and restrictions during school hours set the path for the entire sector, but that the system will only work if other operators also adopt it. Mahoney then made a direct appeal to TikTok and YouTube to “immediately” adopt the same set of rules.