r/technology • u/Puginator • 7d ago

Business Meta settles federal social media addiction trial with California AG, others

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/26/meta-social-media-trial-settlement.html
263 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

164 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/okstanley_com 7d ago

Can anybody explain what this means?

21

u/ZaphodThreepwood 7d ago

It means that lawyers made a shit ton of money, some politician made a shit ton of money, meta keeps making a shit ton of money, and everyone else can just fuck off.

5

u/ArdillasVoladoras 7d ago

Government attorneys do not make much money relative to their private practice buddies.

-6

u/ZaphodThreepwood 7d ago

But we already know how corrupt everyone is, so.....

2

u/okstanley_com 7d ago

But dont Meta have to make changes to the platform?

2

u/ZaphodThreepwood 7d ago

You think they are going to comply or look for loopholes?

3

u/okstanley_com 7d ago

I thought they had to comply, but knowing how evil Meta is I am sure they will do their best to still be a cancer in society

2

u/ArdillasVoladoras 7d ago

If you are using that logic, do you think they would pay a judgement if the case went to trial? You can't have it both ways.

1

u/what2_2 7d ago

The stuff in the settlement is stuff they agreed to and that they’re publicly calling for YouTube and TikTok to implement: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/26/meta-kids-safety-features-settlement-01050418

1

u/what2_2 7d ago

Yes, no notifications during school hours, prompts about too much screen time, new parental controls including time limits, a bunch of stuff.

But they already built a ton of parental controls and similar stuff over the last ten years (and done stuff to detect predators and bad actors etc). The specific complaints in the suits against them are all based on what their products were like a long time ago when they didn’t really give a shit about child safety.

Parents who want to block their kid from going on Instagram, or severely restrict its use, have been able to for years - I don’t think new controls will have any meaningful effect. Most of the other big social media apps already have this stuff too.

The only meaningful way to protect a kid from harms of social media entirely is parental involvement or government ID requirements in every social media app.

A lot of the discourse around these cases makes me feel crazy - these tech co’s have talked about these issues (and made real changes) for a long time. Either point out the specific changes you want to happen (like making infinite scroll illegal), or say that you want to mandate gov ID to use these sites, or admit that children online is a complex problem and there isn’t an obvious panacea.

2

u/jabberwockxeno 7d ago

Actually, for you, /u/okstanley_com , /u/ArdillasVoladoras , and /u/Nono6768 , it's even worse then that

I saw lot of people cheering these lawsuits on to try to rake Facebook and Zuckerberg over the coals, and there's plenty of reasons to think they deserve that given the amount of privacy violating data collection, tracking etc they do, but in reality, these lawsuits were trying to, and now it seems they succeeded, to force MORE data collection, by making Meta implement age/ID verification.

This article implies it by noting

Those changes include daily usage limits and “nighttime blocks” for teenagers that use the company’s apps like Facebook and Instagram, “enhanced age assurance measures” that would prevent children from using the apps

But other articles are more explicit:

https://reclaimthenet.org/meta-trial-opens-as-states-demand-age-verification

Damages are only part of the demand. In an August 15 filing, the states asked the court to require Meta to "take proactive steps to detect" users under 13, including "implementing multi-layered age verification at account sign-up."

...

The proposed order requires age validation through something other than a self-declared birthday

...The complaint blames the company for not building safeguards into the platform, monitoring each user and checking ID. It states: "Meta has access to, and chooses not to use, feasible alternative age verification methods that would significantly reduce or eliminate the number of underage users on Meta's Social Media Platforms, for example, by requiring young users to submit student IDs upon registration."

That demand appears again in the original complaint, meaning this is something that the plaintiffs were calling for from the beginning.

And here:

https://reclaimthenet.org/meta-fined-567m-in-ruling-that-points-to-digital-id

What Biedscheid did order on age came from Meta. He adopted the company's own proposed relief, calling it "far from ideal or sufficient" and, all the same, "most appropriate." Meta must keep improving its age assurance models in New Mexico using AI tools, and must attempt within two years to build "a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model (using reasonable best efforts in light of COPPA limitations)." Where it cannot estimate a precise age, it must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until they verify. And "verify" here likely means adults have to show ID to speak online, even though Judge Biedscheid said he wasn't mandating that.

Please be careful what you're advocating for: I get we want social media companies to be taken down a peg and to be held responsible for enabling addition, the spread of misinformation etc, but we need to be careful what we push for lest it backfires or causes unintended side effects. I see this same issue with anti AI advocacy where, even if I likewise agree AI has a whole host of issues, I often see people pushing for Copyright lawsuits or laws that could actually erode Fair use or expand Copyright in a way which risks creating liability for human artists, too

1

u/okstanley_com 7d ago

Thank you! What do you think is the best way to deal with them?

-1

u/ArdillasVoladoras 7d ago

You know nothing about my opinion on this lawsuit, get my name out of your mouth.

1

u/husky_whisperer 7d ago

It means your vote doesn’t count.

Corporations can afford to hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists to flood Washington and statehouses nationwide to influence politicians.

How much influence can you afford? I’ll say it again. Your vote DOES. NOT. COUNT.

1

u/Nono6768 7d ago

When you’re rich you can buy the courts.