Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

I don't understand. Why is meta paying 70% while Google tiktok etc are paying 15-30%

Are these not the same apps

So the money goes to families with children? Or is it going to fund other harming activities?

Shame on anyone working there in 2026.

I find it fascinating how spotty the evidence around "Social Media" causing harm seems to be (as opposed to: harm happening on social media because that is just where kids are now), yet how viscerally so many people seem to agree that it must be the case.

Why is that?

"just cost of doing business." - some Meta boardroom.

Meanwhile they burned $80B on building the Metaverse :)

Business as usual. The ownership class will always win. At this point I really doubt we will ever get anything that isn't either small payment relatively or something they can't weasel out of.

LifeLog wins again.

“Shares of Meta rose 4.4% in pre-market trading.”

still feels like they got away easy for raping children's minds

"Meta has long argued it could not have misled consumers about whether its services were addictive because "social media addiction" is not a recognized psychiatric condition."

that's a nice escape hatch, considering that they are using all the tricks in the book (from online gambling, etc) and then some

Disgusting. A drop in a bucket, quickly recovered via tax breaks, government spending, etc.

Meta employees should be accountable for this. And stock buyers too.

You could choose to work elsewhere. You could choose to invest in something else.

Many here are shocked when a company does not observe GNU licensing, but are OK working, using or investing in such an evil organization.

Just a ridiculous cash grab

So if I write a book that your kid just can't stop reading it over and over again because I deliberately made it compulsively re-readable, and then your kid develops some kind of issues because my book is so interesting to him, you can sue me and win?

I don't like that idea. Personally, I value free speech more than some supposed "harms" done to children by content. Content that they can easily stop consuming by just closing the app.

The amount is too small, as usual, and is just a slightly annoying cost of doing business.

So harming kids has an official price tag now, $17B. That’s about $8 for every kid in the world.

Shame; the states involved has an opportunity for actual redress of harms, as opposed to just some campaign-worthy soundbyte.

It's kind of funny that Facebook tried to launder its brand by renaming itself Meta, and its vile reputation is haunting that brand now too. New name is so abstract is sounds vaguely dystopian.

Not sure that it matters though, because Instagram and WhatsApp are still in everyone's pockets. Even in hippie circles, they're almost mandatory to stay connected.

Zuck, PUBLIC ENEMY #1

Pay the fine, go back to exploiting humanity.

Its not enough. Shut them down.

Minors should just be banned from social media

File more suits, then.

$17 billion is nothing. Should have been more like $500 billion.

No, no, no we’ve got this all wrong! Courts are meant to change laws not charge fees.

17B is cheap compared to changing the laws being exploited.

META won this one hands down.

Pathetic and toothless. Zuckerberg and all the scum like him should be getting all of their ill-gotten assets seized and his insides rearranged inside some maximum security prison, not this pathetic bullshit.

Ok, but how the kids will recover from all this harm? Is this money gonna be used correctly for once?

I remember when I was working at Meta, I was offered a "high impact" opportunity to work on youth products. Nope.

Basically a slap on the wrist.

Link is paywalled

Is this a different case from the $1.5 trillion suit against them?

Great, now the rest of the world needs to sue them too

Anything that doesn't have Zuckerberg and the rest of the top brass in a gulag the rest of their lives doesn't go far enough.

Isn't this just the EU wanting to tax big american businesses?

Pocket change

Imagine still believing that working at a insidious company such as Meta is a "badge of honour" after knowing that they did this for decades.

lol ad money be good

lol this is pretty pathetic. Chump change. Good job US “justice system”

So a literal slap on the wrist that doesn’t discourage or stop the actually harmful behavior.

Look, I get that certain demographics are terrified of another Arthur Andersen-esque collapse of a firm, but if we don’t punish companies to the point of possible insolvency, then we’re creating a moral hazard wherein more companies will continue engaging in harmful behavior because they know they won’t ever be held properly accountable.

If we actually harmed (or even bankrupted) Meta with a suitable fine relative to the harms inflicted, you’d see the wider social media industry (and adjacent tech companies) clean up their shit really fucking fast to avoid a similar fate.

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I absolutely hate these settlement endings. The states were going to win.

I am so sick of corporations getting slaps no the wrist for these heinous crimes. Why is there no fucking justice in this god damn country?

$16.6B versus $1.4T market cap (1.17%). So basically rob a bank of $100 million dollars, on your way out give $1.1 million to cops and you are free to go with the rest.

Table stakes. Just the cost of doing business.

A bit like millionaires who park illegally because "it only cost $100 to park here, and my PA will do the admin"

I’m beyond sick of how this country operates. This is small potatoes for Meta and stops the $1T+ lawsuit, which would have had an actual impact on these scumbags.

Time and time again it’s the same story: the Protestant worship of money and wealth at the expense of others. If it makes money then it’s a blessing from God, and thus cannot be evil.

Sorry, Americans, but your children will be mind raped with social media and pornography to grow the GDP. Don’t put up a fight: the government has their back. And an army.

This is so cheap to them. Why should they comply with the law when it is so cheap to them not doing so?

Financial settlements of what should be criminal cases should not be allowed. Hundreds or thousands of people at Meta should instead be jailed.

If we assume that the median income for a Meta employee/board member is 100 kUSD then that 16 GUSD is 160 000 man years. 16 000 people should go to jail for 10 years instead. And that should include everyone at the top.