By Madlin Mekelburg, Riley Griffin and Alexandra S. Levine
Meta Platforms Inc. is mounting a public pressure campaign to make its social media rivals add guardrails to their platforms to curb teen usage, after signing a historic $18 billion settlement with US states requiring new safety features on Facebook and Instagram.
The deal includes an unusual and significant incentive: a $5.3 billion portion of Meta’s payout over the next decade depends on whether its industry competitors commit to adding similar platform changes and agree to make comparable contributions to state initiatives to help kids.
TikTok, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Snap Inc. have so far stayed publicly silent. They have no legal obligation to make concessions, but legal experts and industry observers say the pressure from Meta and state attorneys general could force their hand.
“There is definitely a very big pressure campaign, and the question is going to be whether competitors within this space see it within their interest,” said Kate Ruane, an attorney and the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Free Expression Project.
TikTok, YouTube and Snap didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In a public callout to TikTok and YouTube on Wednesday that included a plan to publish open letters in newspapers, Meta said it’s seeking to set a “new industry standard.”
“For meaningful progress to happen, we urge our peers to join us,” the company said.
As part of the agreement, in which Meta denies wrongdoing, the company said it will enact a series of changes geared toward protecting users under 18. They will face daily time limits for scrolling on Facebook and Instagram, and will be blocked from using the platforms overnight. Young users also will be barred from receiving notifications during school hours and from seeing the number of “likes” on posts.
All of these settings will be engaged by default for US users who sign up for teen accounts and can only be overturned with parental consent.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said changes outlined in the agreement are “weak sauce” when considering the scope of the issue. She stressed that kids are adept at getting around age restrictions and the changes seem to lack real teeth, by allowing parents to turn off default settings.
“Are YouTube and TikTok going to follow suit?” she said. “They might, because they might think they’re not giving up very much.”
In the meantime, as long as Meta adopts these changes and its competitors do not, it could have a range of business ramifications, including driving more traffic to Meta’s rivals — or to other platforms altogether.
“This will force a bit more of a diversification of the market,” said Sonia Livingstone, a professor at the London School of Economics and director of Digital Futures for Children, a research center led by LSE and the 5Rights Foundation.
Meta has downplayed the potential business impact of the changes, emphasizing on a call with reporters Wednesday that it makes little money from teen users who don’t have much to spend and drive less than 1 per cent of its overall revenue.
At the same time, the company suggested it will be at a competitive disadvantage if its rivals are not playing by the same rules.
Meta said on a call with reporters Wednesday that Congress passing legislation would have been the optimal answer to this issue, binding all the tech platforms to the same rules. (Meta has lobbied against key bipartisan legislation such as the Kids Online Safety Act.)
Ongoing litigation could also intensify pressure on the other social media giants. The case that settled this week was directed solely at Meta, but numerous individual states are pursuing action against TikTok, and some are also targeting Google and Snap.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office helped lead the case against Meta, said he’s confident that an industrywide solution will materialize.
“We insist that it’ll happen — it’ll happen one way or another,” he said during an interview on CNBC on Thursday.
On a call with reporters Wednesday, Bonta declined to comment on the potential for Meta’s rivals to make changes, or whether discussions with them were underway.
California is among about a dozen states that have sued TikTok over child safety concerns. Bonta said he hopes leaders at the company — and YouTube and Snap — will “come to the table and commit to these changes going forward.”
“We’re willing to take additional steps as well, if they don’t do it voluntarily,” he said.
Meta’s settlement could give an upper hand to states in those legal fights, according to Matthew Bergman, founder of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center.
“Kids use these platforms interchangeably. If you’re going to improve safety on one, it has to be an across-the-board change,” he said. “I think Meta’s pressure will have something to do with it, but it will also have a tremendous impact on the litigation. How can TikTok say it’s unreasonable to limit screen time if Meta has already done that?”
All four companies are still facing more than 3,000 personal injury lawsuits filed by or on behalf of teens, who claim the platforms are addictive and contributed to their mental health struggles. They are also contending with more than 1,000 school district lawsuits based on allegations that the platforms are a public nuisance.
The group of attorneys behind the personal injury cases applauded the changes Meta pledged to implement for young users on its platform, but said it doesn’t move the needle for their clients.
They stressed that this week’s deal does not compensate the young people they represent for the harm they allege stems from compulsive use of platforms designed to be addictive.
“Our clients are seeking accountability for specific, individual harms — including depression, self-harm, eating disorders and death — that we allege were the foreseeable result of choices these platforms made,” they said. “Nothing in this settlement changes that, and nothing in it speaks for our clients.”
