Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrested another large settlement from a tech company this week, this one a cool $1 billion…
…from Meta AKA Facebook over youth safety abuses.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday that his office has secured a proposed settlement worth more than $1 billion with Meta Platforms Inc. that would require the company to adopt new safety features for children using its social media platforms.
Paxton said the agreement would direct more than $1 billion to the State of Texas for youth mental health services, crisis resources, digital literacy programs, after-school initiatives and grants for Texas schools. The settlement would also impose new platform requirements involving age assurance, teen screen-time limits, school-hour notifications, public reactions, and nighttime access.
“This is a historic settlement and a major win for the safety of Texas children,” Paxton said in a statement. “Not only will Meta pay over $1 billion to Texas, but the company will also implement significant new safety features to better protect children’s precious minds and well-being on its platforms.”
Under the announced terms, Meta would be required to use stricter age-assurance measures and impose a default two-hour daily limit for teen users. Teens could turn off the limit only with a parent’s permission.
Push notifications would be muted by default during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., except for direct messages and account-security or safety alerts. Likes and reactions would also be hidden by default, a feature the attorney general’s office said is intended to reduce social comparison among young users.
The company would additionally create a nighttime-access setting designed to limit notifications and certain other features for children between midnight and 6 a.m. Meta would continue to restrict age-inappropriate content and provide parental-supervision tools, according to Paxton’s office.
The announcement comes as Meta faces ongoing scrutiny and litigation from states alleging that its Facebook and Instagram platforms harmed children by encouraging compulsive use. Meta has denied claims that it knowingly designed its platforms to addict young users.
A lot of these seem like pretty common sense features all parents would want. Why didn’t Facebook implement them long ago? With a market cap of 1.45 trillion dollars, I think they can afford it. Of course, that would get in the way of Facebook sucking up every last drop of user data, no matter the cost.
One billion dollars is a lot of money, but it’s still a drop in the bucket to Meta, and I seriously doubt it will discourage them from beta testing Torment Nexus 2.0 on the next batch of teenage lab subjects.
Tags: Facebook, Ken Paxton, Lawsuit, Sydnie Henry, technology, Texas, Texas Scorecard