Attorney General Chris Carr announced today a landmark $17.1 billion multistate big tech settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc., marking the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
In addition to the payment, Meta will implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on the company’s largest platforms, Instagram and Facebook.
What is Meta paying up for? The big tech settlement resolves claims made by 47 States and other territories that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms.
How big is this as a victory? This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens.
Under the settlement, the State of Georgia will receive close to $100 million and could receive almost $135 million.
What AG Chris Carr had to say:
- “For years, we pushed major social media platforms to implement critical safeguards that protect our kids online, and that’s exactly what this outcome helps to accomplish. This is a landmark agreement that sets the standard for future cases, and while Meta is the first to come to the table, they shouldn’t be the last. It shouldn’t take lawsuits, legislation, or investigations to do the right thing. Keeping our children safe will always be our top priority.”
Further Context: Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite harmful effects.
Following a bipartisan, nationwide investigation that found that Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, attorneys general across the country sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit.
This big tech settlement resolves those cases and claims by the other settling states and territories by requiring Meta to comply with new standards and pay significant fines.
