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. But the bigger story here isn’t the dollar amount. It’s what Meta now has to build: the most detailed child-safety rules any major platform has agreed to, resting on age-verification technology that still doesn’t work particularly well.
Meta hasn’t admitted wrongdoing, even as it settles allegations that it intentionally designed its platforms to keep children hooked — a common tactic for companies looking to avoid a jury trial, where the risk of a worse outcome is higher. A ruling against Meta could also have jeopardized the legal protections that allow social platforms to escape liability for what users post. Alexis Ingber, a professor of communications at Syracuse University, told TechCrunch.
By default, teens won’t be able to see ‘like’ counts on their own posts or others’, among other changes. Companies now typically verify age through biometric scans (like a selfie), government ID checks, or analysis of behavioral patterns, and each comes with its own flaws. Behavioral analysis can misjudge adults as minors or vice versa, while ID and biometric checks require kids, and adults, to hand sensitive documents over to a third party just to use an app.
Some users also don’t trust platforms to roll out age-verification responsibly. Discord learned this firsthand when it tried to implement global age verification earlier this year and had to delay the rollout after significant user backlash. Not everyone shares that pessimism, though.
Still, Ingber and other experts caution that even if companies don’t retain this data, simply transmitting sensitive identity information online carries its own privacy risk. A breach of ID scans or facial biometric data tied to minors creates the risk of identity theft, and unlike a password, a leaked face or fingerprint can’t be changed. Meanwhile, as Meta and the 52 state attorneys general finalize these guidelines — which Meta must follow for the next 10 years — the company is framing the settlement not as a concession, but as proof that it’s a leader in children’s online safety.
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