PA, NJ To Receive Share Of ‘Landmark’ $17.1 Billion Facebook & Instagram Settlement

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are expected to receive hundreds of millions of dollars under a $17.1 billion settlement between Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and a coalition of states.

Pennsylvania will receive at least $525 million, and could get more than $752 million, and New Jersey will get at least $516 million and potentially as much as $729 million.

The settlement is related to allegations by 47 states and several territories that Meta designed its products to be addictive to children. The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey led the effort, with lawyers from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office taking part.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, said the settlement will bring “landmark” changes to how Meta’s platforms operate and that the protections for youth are more important than the money expected to go to the state.

“The days of Meta ignoring the damage its platforms cause kids are over — this is a landmark settlement that brings transformative changes to these hugely-popular social media spaces,” Sunday said in a statement. “These settlement terms will implement effective age restrictions, put a stop to endless scrolling, and limit body-altering filters that skew students’ feelings of self-worth.”

https://youtu.be/QkT8ucBjPSE

“As a parent, protecting your kids is always your North Star. And this agreement achieves critical protections for our children today,” said New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport. “It would not have been possible without our amazing litigation team, who worked with their counterparts across the country to bring this groundbreaking case.”

As part of the proposed agreement, which still requires a federal judge’s approval, Meta would impose a daily time limit of two hours for users under 18. That limit could be reduced to one hour if other social media companies also agree to similar restrictions.

Other changes would include hiding likes and reactions from users under 18, ending notifications to underage users overnight and during typical school hours, creating a mechanism for teenagers to report harmful content, and responding to 90 percent of harmful-content reports within six hours.

In addition, Meta would conduct a broad review and improve its safety protections for teenagers.

Sunday said an auditor will oversee Meta’s implementation of the protections. He said Meta has already implemented similar safeguards in other countries.

The changes are expected to begin taking effect within 30 days and be fully implemented within six months.

The attorneys general said Meta knew its products could harm children’s mental health but continued promoting them despite internal research documenting the alleged harms.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, called the settlement a “major victory.”

“Big Tech is finally being held accountable for the harm it is causing, especially to our children’s mental health and safety. More important, parents and teens will finally get some relief, including groundbreaking new safety features to protect kids online. But here in New Jersey, we won’t stop fighting until all of the Big Tech companies follow suit and finally stop the constant assault of addictive algorithms,” she said.

The case has been compared with past litigation against the tobacco industry.

Opening statements in the trial began last week in a federal courtroom in California, with a long trial expected.

The case was one of a series of bellwether lawsuits testing allegations that major technology companies deliberately marketed products to children while knowing the products could damage their mental health.

Kate Ruane, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil rights organization, said safe and age-appropriate online experiences are important for children but raised concerns about the settlement’s potential effects on privacy and free expression.

“But we also see the potential for significant risks to everyone’s privacy and free expression rights online, especially in the ways this settlement will subject all users to invasive age assurance and limit all kids’ access to content and services regardless of their individual needs,” Ruane said in a statement.

Meta lost a similar lawsuit in New Mexico this year. That case is not part of the settlement.

Meta and other social media and technology companies continue to face lawsuits from parents and school districts across the country with similar claims.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and Bucks County government have filed a similar lawsuit against Meta that is not part of the settlement, according to spokespeople.

The nationwide investigation into the social media industry began in 2021 when nearly every state attorney general cooperated to examine allegations that platforms were designed and promoted to children and teenagers despite known harms.

After the bipartisan investigation, attorneys general alleged that Meta designed Instagram features to addict children, documented resulting mental health harms internally and failed to warn parents. The attorneys general subsequently sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit.

The settlement also resolves the states’ claims that Meta shared nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election.

Facebook’s owner agreed to pay New Jersey more than $565 million as part of a landmark settlement resolving claims by 47 states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories who charged the tech giant violated child privacy and intentionally built addictive features that exposed young users to mental harms.

As part of the settlement agreement, which does not carry an admission of guilt and must still be approved by the courts, tech giant Meta agreed to institute new limits like daily caps on underage users’ social media activity, subject its platforms to independent auditing, and limit the discoverability of teens’ accounts, among other things.

“As a parent, protecting your kids is always your North Star, and this agreement achieves critical protections for our children today,” New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport said in a statement Wednesday.

Meta agreed to pay the states and others who sued a combined $17.1 billion. New Jersey, which was among the first states to sue Meta, will receive between $525 million and $752 from a portion of the settlement covering the firm’s use of addictive features and its minimization of their harms.

New Jersey will also receive $20.3 million over privacy claims related to Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct firm that improperly acquired access to the private data of millions of Facebook users while aiding President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In total, Meta agreed to pay $459.3 million to plaintiffs to resolve claims stemming from Cambridge Analytica, plus $75 million for litigation costs.

The settlement agreement requires Facebook to erect an array of new limits on teens’ social media use.

Those include provisions to block teens’ access to social media platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. and others to limit push notifications from the platforms between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The settlement also requires the tech firm limit teens’ access to its platforms during school hours and regularly present teen users with the option to switch to a non-personalized feed.

The agreement requires Meta to cap teens’ daily use to two hours across all its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, with periodic notifications to pause after 60 and 90 minutes of cumulative use in a given day.

“Today’s settlement is a major victory for New Jersey families. Big Tech is finally being held accountable for the harm it is causing, especially to our children’s mental health and safety. More important, parents and teens will finally get some relief, including groundbreaking new safety features to protect kids online,” said Gov. Mikie Sherrill. “But here in New Jersey, we won’t stop fighting until all of the Big Tech companies follow suit.”

Many of the settlement’s restrictions mirror New Jersey statute that Sherrill signed into law earlier this month.

In an unsigned statement, Meta said teens’ safety is paramount for its platforms but warned the changes may be less impactful if younger users migrate to other social media platforms not subject to the settlement’s provisions.

“We know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another,” it said in the statement. “For meaningful progress to happen, we urge TikTok and YouTube to join us and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard, to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way.”

Other parts of the settlement require Meta to block teens from seeing like counts, limit unrelated adults’ ability to find their accounts, and step up its own age verification efforts.