Meta’s plaintiffs, with whom it has reached an agreement that still needs to be validated by the judge in charge of the case, were 47 of the 50 U.S. states, in addition to the District of Columbia and some territories of the country. The agreement will oblige Mark Zuckerberg’s company not only to pay 17.1 billion dollars in fines, but also to introduce changes in its social networks to try to correct the addiction risks it causes in minors, in addition to strengthening the age verification system and parental controls.
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Among the changes Meta has agreed to introduce on its platforms, the company has agreed to discontinue infinite scroll, where after each post a new one is presented, in an endless loop. Social networks like Facebook and Instagram will also have to combat addiction and sleep interruptions, so they must limit their use between midnight and six in the morning and silence notifications between 10 at night and 7 in the morning.
Under the out-of-court settlement, Meta will have to limit a series of features that lead to negative social comparisons affecting younger people, such as beauty filters and the “likes” count. Beyond the multi-million dollar financial compensation, all these modifications that the technology company has agreed to carry out are part of the ultimate goal of the lawsuit, as indicated by some of the prosecutors involved in the case, which is to protect minors from the pressure they are subjected to by these platforms.
Although it is not the first time Meta has committed – in vain – to making changes to improve conditions affecting minors, this agreement, reached while the trial was already underway and before administrations across the United States, will force it to be accountable beyond the high monetary payment. It is not clear at this initial stage of the agreement how compliance with these commitments will be audited or who will be responsible for certifying them. The pact only states that the implementation and effectiveness of the measures will be periodically evaluated by an independent auditor and by the states that participated in the lawsuit.
Meta’s problems do not end with this pact, although it may provide some relief, because the monetary amount of a possible conviction could have been higher. The company led by Zuckerberg has a series of lawsuits against it that, after the resolution of this case, will have a precedent regarding the company’s admission of responsibility for problems caused to minors worldwide.
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The measures will force Meta and its competitors to change the algorithms that seek user attention
As a second consequence, companies that have social networks used by minors will be forced to profoundly change their algorithms, after many years in which fostering permanent user connection has been the primary objective for monetizing attention through advertising. The way Meta and other companies do business may have been significantly marked by this case.
The Facebook and Instagram company has published an open letter stating that it cannot ensure that the child protections it has committed to implement will work if other social networks do not do the same, because teenagers switch from one to another when they encounter a restriction. “These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers, TikTok and YouTube, to apply the same measures,” it has demanded of its competitors.
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In the rest of the world, Meta will also find itself in the eye of regulators. In Australia, access to social media is prohibited for minors under 16, and half of Europe, including Spain, is considering following suit, as are some Asian countries such as India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. These protective measures do not exclude some investigations that are already underway and could lead to new fines and even lawsuits.
