Meta Paid $17B – Gets to Write Safety Rules for Other SocMedia Platform
This analysis explores the legal implications of Meta's settlement regarding safety rules for social media platforms. It questions whether such settlements effectively bypass legislative processes and create quasi-legal standards for the industry.
Why it matters
It highlights the tension between corporate legal settlements and the constitutional limits of government-mandated speech regulation.
Notably, a legislature could not have mandated most of these features without running straight into the First Amendment — but coming out of a settlement, they carry the imprimatur of law anyway (more on that in a moment)
Here it’s doing so because it’s being forced to by various state AGs, making it a state action.
Under the Supreme Court’s recent (unanimous) Vullo decision, that seems pretty clearly unconstitutional.
“forced” is awkward here, because this is a ‘voluntary’ settlement. Meta is/was not obligated to settle. Vullo pretty clearly does not forbid settlements. In some sense, this is Meta voluntarily blocking it.
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