In recent years, dozens of families, schools and states have sued Meta/Facebook, with Meta losing every single case (thus far). Almost all of the lawsuits have been about Meta’s failure to protect young people, and for creating an addictive and dangerous product which destroyed families and lives. With every lost case, Meta’s spox always came out and promised to appeal. Narrator’s voice: they haven’t yet appealed. Meta has just made a “landmark settlement” with 47 states.

Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.

In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues,striking at the heart of the company’s business of engagement for advertising.

The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. The states filed their agreement with Meta on Wednesday morning in that court, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to approve it.

Meta still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals, some of which are scheduled for trial in the coming months.

The settlement could signal an inflection point for a social media industry that has largely escaped regulatory scrutiny over the harms its products have caused children. The settlement amount is one of the highest ever paid by a tech company to states. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. That sum increases to $17.1 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.

“Meta wouldn’t settle unless it sees the writing on the wall and feels really exposed,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University.

The agreement may also play into other legal claims against Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap, the owner of Snapchat. States, schools and teenagers have filed thousands of lawsuits against the tech companies, accusing them of targeting young users with product features that are as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos, drawing inspiration in part from a legal playbook used against Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

[From The NY Times]

Am I the only one underwhelmed by the settlement amount? I know it’s not actually about the money, it’s about forcing Meta to change their policies and create more protections for kids. But if these lawsuits were successful – as the bellwether verdicts suggested they would be – Meta was going to be out tens of billions of dollars. They’ve settled for a fraction of that, and it’s not even an across-the-board settlement. There are school districts, states and families not included in this settlement. Meta’s lawyers still have a lot of work to do. But yeah, a big settlement. A historic capitulation (if you consider “settling before getting your ass beat in multiple courts for years to come” a capitulation).

Also: This settlement doesn’t cover the impending class-action lawsuit about those horrible Meta glasses, which are a huge privacy breach. Wait until the Meta-glasses lawsuits really get rolling.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.