On the eighth day of the trial and with Mark Zuckerberg about to testify, Meta reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 52 U.S. jurisdictions. It will pay about $17 billion over ten years and change the operation of Instagram and Facebook for minors.
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The amount of the potential fine — up to $1.4 trillion, almost the company’s market value — had been calculated by the defense itself by multiplying each violation by its penalty to try to influence the court (are you going to bankrupt us?). It was never a real possibility. The core issue was the restrictions the judge could impose going forward.
Meta has not paid a fine. It has bought the new industry standard
It did not have to impose them. Meta commits to limiting Facebook and Instagram use to two hours daily for those under eighteen, blocking the feed and reels from midnight to six, and silencing notifications during school hours. Additionally, the number of hidden likes, banned cosmetic surgery filters, and the chronological feed by default. Too little for my taste, but it is a start.
But Meta has left a poison clause. Of those $17 billion, it pays $12 billion upfront; the other $5 billion only if TikTok and YouTube adopt equivalent measures and put up the same amount. If they do, it is even willing to lower the limit to one hour a day! In an ode to cynicism, on Friday it published an open letter in major U.S. newspapers where it dubs its restrictions as “the new industry standard.”
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This is not philanthropy, it is survival. After two decades copying each other’s capture, retention, and exploitation mechanisms, the networks are clones of each other: whoever sets the curfew first gives away their sleepless teenagers to the competition. Meta positions itself as protector and forces its rivals to make a move. The $17 billion is, in reality, the price of regulating competition.
TikTok and YouTube have said nothing. They can leave Instagram bogged down in lawyers and welcome the young people who at two in the morning will seek their dose of short videos. Or they can get ahead of the trials and also implement the restrictions. They would do well to remember Microsoft: the 1998 antitrust law did not shut it down, but constant judicial oversight and thinking more about lawyers than users contributed to it being late to the mobile music, search, and smartphone revolutions.
Don McLean began the first verse of American Pie with: “A long, long time ago / I still remember how that music / Made me smile.” The verse ended with: “The day the music died.” We have all sung it and all remember how those networks made us smile.
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