Last week, Meta settled a court case concerning the protection of minors on their so-called “social” platforms. Many news outlets reported about it. As you can tell from the similarities between all these reports, it is not easy to summarize such a settlement. I tried my best to do some original digging, and to base this post as much as I can on the original lawsuit (pdf) and the actual settlement document (pdf). This post may be a bit boring (as was writing it, honestly), but I think it is important to know a bit more precisely what happened than what can be read in the Reuters-copied news reports. So here we go: a summary of the lawsuit, the settlement and my two cents on what this all means.

In summary, I believe the settlement is a missed opportunity, failing to enforce enduring improvements to the addictive design choices of Meta platforms. The specific remedies required are for a large share positive, but are only implemented for children. This not only deprives adults from these remedies, but it also means that age-verification is implied in the settlement, which is in itself problematic. Specific remedies do not address the underlying problematic incentive structure that comes with Meta’s attention-based business model. The settlement does therefor very little to limit Meta’s freedom to develop new tricks to get us and our children hooked in the future.

The lawsuit

A group of states sued Meta for intentionally addicting children, for knowing that the addictive designs harmed children’s mental health, for downplaying these harms in their communication, and violating child-protection laws.

With their claim, the states requested a number of remedies to stop the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms. The states requested a halt to:

• Manipulative algorithms that select the content children see
• The system of likes and other social comparison features
• Alerts prompting young users to return to platform around the clock
• Visual features (filters etc.) known to promote body dysmorphia
• Content-presentation formats such as “infinite scroll” designed to discourage attempts to self-regulation usage.

So in a nutshell, the lawsuit says: Meta, you are making our children addicted, tired and unhappy. You need to stop doing this. And not only should you stop doing this, you also should pay an astronomic fine (about 1000 billion, or a million millions) for having done so for years!

The settlement

As you could read in the news, the case got settled. For me, it is difficult to understand why and how this settlement was reached, but the result boils down to the following: Meta does not admit any wrongdoing, but settles by paying a monetary relief of about 18 billion and by promising to implement a number of remedies. Below, I summarize the measures required by the settlement, and I reflect on their effectiveness and desirability.

The money (and what one could do with that)

Before focusing on the promised remedies, let’s say something about the monetary relief that is also part of the settlement. On the one hand, 18 billion is not a lot of money. With a yearly revenue swinging between 150 and 200 billion a year, this is around 10% of Meta’s revenue. It hurts, but it will not keep them from wrongdoing in the future. Indeed, they will never need to pay this again, as this case is settled.

On the other hand, 18 billion is a gigantic amount of money. If the receiving states would spend their part on the development and maintenance of open social media, as @j12t rightfully suggested, this would be such a significant push, that it would allow a number of platforms to be brought to the Fediverse that could actually form a true alternative for the masses. Of course these states won’t do that.

The remedies (and how they harm you)

Meta promises a number of specific measures, as well as intentions to reduce a number of harmful effects.

The harm is to you

There is one crucial condition in the settlement: All remedies that Meta must implement to reduce harm only apply to children. This means two things:

1. Age verification will be implemented.
2. Nothing will be improved for adults.

Thus, for adults, the situation only gets worse. As I explained in another post, age verification hurts adults too. The settlement obliges Meta verify the age of every user, including you. Depending on the precise implementation (on which the settlement spends 3 pages), such age verification endangers our privacy, reduces our freedom of expression, and/or excludes people who will not or cannot identify themselves. In exchange for this, we get nothing. A textbook example of non-proportionality.

Some lousy but positive changes for children

So what’s in it for children? Here we go. For each of the remedies, I add my short take on it. Hereby, note that I ignore my deep opposition to implementing these remedies only for children and the fact that this requires harmful age-verification.

Concrete measures

• Children’s use will be limited during night time, and during school hours, to be set by the parents. Limiting depends on the parents’ choice, from disabling notifications to barring use of the platform except from messaging.
  • This is positive, but I trust in particular Facebook to make total mess of the user experience here.
• Platforms will turn off when a daily limit of 120 minutes (across Meta’s platforms) is reached.
  • This is positive. Curious about the implementation. Will it just turn black?
• Teens must have an accessible “non-personalized” feed. Meta must prompt them every 3 months about this feed choice.
  • This is a bit positive, giving American children the same rights that all Europeans already have thanks to the Digital Services Act and hard work by Bits of Freedom.
• Likes and reaction counts are hidden by default
  • This is positive, but I do not think this is the biggest problem of Meta platforms.
• Cosmetic filters are disabled for teens.
  • This is positive, also esthetically.

Each remedy on this list refers to one of the practical requests in the lawsuit. Only one is missing, a call for disabling the “infinite scroll”. No remedy is implemented referring to this.

As general note, for all the measures listed above, parents have the right to loosen restrictions for their kids. I think this severely limits the potential benefits of these measures. In particular, I dislike how Meta must only offer the option to turn off the algorithmic feed. By default, it’s on. Parents must actively turn it off. Not all parents understand how important this is and will not turn it off. And if they do, good luck with that, parents! (By the way, why don’t they require Meta to create algorithms that select nice stuff? We are only made to believe that a feed is either chronological and boring, or addictive. This is an artificial dichotomy.)

“concrete” Intentions

In addition to the concrete measures listed above, Meta must implement or improve measures to reduce harm. They spend a lot of words on it in the settlement, but in summary Meta must:

• limit access and consumption of age-inappropriate content
  • Oh no, forcing Meta to implement more of stupid US prudishness.
• reduce bullying
  • Positive, but this is not Meta’s responsibility, it’s teachers’ and parents’
• limit contact and discoverability between teens and suspicious accounts.
  • positive, as long as this does not lead to automatic profiling of “dangerous men”, which it probably will. So, negative.

Parental control

Meta must also implement some measures to supply parents with more information about their childrens’ online life. The platform should supply information on:

• the teen’s time on Meta services
• messaging and long-form-video use
• social connections and reported users
• repeated searches related to suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders
• first-time direct communication with each adult user.

I think these parental control measures are fine, but their effect greatly depends on the implementation by software and parents.

Conclusion: A missed opportunity

Overlooking the results of the case, it seems a big opportunity was missed here, and even largely spoiled for the future. Meta does not admit anything. They get away with some lousy measures dependent on a dangerous move towards age-verification. Positively, one could say that most of the lousy measures promised address some of concrete problems of Big Tech platforms.

The root cause remains unaddressed

A big problem is that the measures that Meta is required to take to reduce their addictive design are really specific. This means that when in the future, Meta inevitably invents new tricks to hook children, these will not be covered by this settlement. The settlement does not say: Meta may never again optimize their platform design for maximizing screen time and engagement. Indeed, the words “addiction” or “addictive design” do not occur in the entire settlement, where the lawsuit mentioned addiction about a hundred times.

This means that the root cause stays untouched. The real underlying problem, as I have argued here once or twice before, is the attention-based business model of Meta and all other Big Tech “social” platforms. As long as presenting advertisement on the Facebook and Instagram, and profiling users to sell advertisement elsewhere on the web is Meta’s way of making money, they will keep doing anything to keep us and our children hooked. This attention-based business model works as long as these platforms are fenced gardens, where you can only facebook on Facebook, and only insta on Insta, with no option to break out without loosing your connections, your social graph. This monopolization of network niches leads to the situation where platforms can enshittify their platform, putting interests of shareholders high above the preferences and health of their users.

A real solution

The good thing is that these platforms’ dependence on being a fenced garden also offers a possible real solution: We should bring down the fences by forcing social networks to abide by open standards. Big Tech socials will need to open their doors and let in some fresh air in their moldy depths. Users will be able to choose to leave one platform for a nicer alternative, while keeping their social graph. Such freedom incentivizes de-enshittification.

A threat to the open social web?

Many people in the open social web, or more specifically the Fediverse, will hate the idea of connecting to Facebook or Instagram. I understand this sentiment, but we need to realize that this is not going to happen overnight. If legislation enforcing interoperability is passed some day, months or years will pass before its implementation. In these months, Big Tech firms will throw a lot of money on building platforms designed to suck each other dry once the doors are opened.

Those new platforms may not be platforms you and I like, but their owners will necessarily be interested in fulfilling the wishes of their users: all of a sudden they need to convince users to come and to stay, by offering unique features and novel designs. Addiction will still be an issue, but only to the extend that users like to be addicted. As a crucial benefit, new and independent platforms that offer functionalities that no one ever thought of will get an actual chance to flourish, thanks to the open-door policy implied by the open standars used. On such a truly open social web, plurality and local cultures may again become as defining for us all as they are in the rest of our lives.