Meta’s $18B child-safety deal hinges on age-verification tech that doesn’t work well
Meta has reached an $18 billion settlement with 29 U.S. states regarding allegations of child safety failures on Instagram and Facebook. While the headline figure is large, analysts note the payment is spread over a decade and may be less impactful than the requirement to implement complex, unproven age-verification technology.
Why it matters
This settlement sets a significant precedent for how social media platforms are held accountable for user safety and may force industry-wide changes in age-gating technology.
Meta reached an $18 billion settlement on Wednesday over a lawsuit brought by 29 U.S. states concerning children’s safety. The settlement is historic in scale as Meta agrees with a group of 52 attorneys general to implement sweeping changes to how minors use Instagram and Facebook.
The settlement “gives the AGs what they want, which is the political story that they’ve extracted a huge amount of benefit for the public from this settlement, including the platform changes,” Jessica Nall , a technology litigator at Withers, told TechCrunch. But Nall noted the settlement’s real-dollar impact is softer than the headline number suggests. “The fact that it’s being paid over 10 years really does blunt the financial impact of the large number, especially compared to Meta’s annual revenue … We’re talking about one of these tech companies where their annual revenue is larger than the GDP of most European countries.”
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in