Meta agrees to enhanced age assurance in $18B settlement in social media harms case

Meta has agreed to pay U.S. states up to $18 billion, settling a major California court case over the risks its platforms pose to young users – and the deal includes “enhanced age assurance measures,” which could include biometric solutions.

Meta faced lawsuits from 29 states alleging that it purposefully and knowingly made its platform addictive and unsafe for children. Its trial, which began last week, had been expected to go on for as long as two months.

However, with just one Meta executive having taken the stand (Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram) the company apparently decided that shelling out billions and shaking up its product is preferable to a dragged-out trial that would have seen CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify in a very public spotlight.

A statement from Meta says the settlement includes a payment of approximately $18 billion, “which can be used to fund youth online safety initiatives, among other state priorities.”

According to NBC, the court filing says that the company “denies the allegations against it and that it has any liability to the Plaintiffs.” In effect, Meta – worth roughly $1.36 trillion – is tossing the dog a juicy financial bone while shrugging its shoulders over any wrongdoing.

Time limits, non-algorithmic options coming to Facebook, Instagram

Nonetheless, more significant than the money at stake is the changes Meta has promised to make to its platforms. The report quotes Rob Bonta, the attorney general for California, who says the company has conceded to making “massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms – and will do it within months.”

The proposed changes for kids’ accounts include a combined daily time limit of two hours for Instagram and Facebook, a ban on notifications during school hours, an overnight block, bans on plastic surgery and “extreme makeup” filters, and the aforementioned “enhanced age assurance” measures. The company also says youth can “choose a non-algorithmic feed – one that isn’t personalized by our recommendation systems – as their default.”

A separate statement from Meta’s chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney leans into the company’s preferred position: that parents should be managing their kids’ social media habits. It also takes a page from the pornographer’s handbook, in calling for an even regulatory playing field.

“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution,” Mahoney says. “We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away.”

This sets up the future possibility of pointing to noncompliant sites as an argument against online safety measures in general.

AVPA celebrates Meta’s commitments as major win for sector

Meta’s official stance – that it works hard on safety features to ensure its young users don’t come to harm – has not changed. What has is the public – and legal – will to believe it. While the settlement still requires the approval of a judge, it marks a sea change on several levels: a financial penalty that actually stings (if just a little), and the first instance in which Meta has been forced to change how its platforms function.

As to “enhanced age assurance,” Meta’s agreement has gone some way toward setting a common standard for how to define what that means. According to a statement from the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), the company has reportedly agreed to “legally binding accuracy thresholds for age assurance methods deployed by Meta on Facebook and Instagram.”

“Commercially available age verification and estimation methods must achieve a false positive rate of no more than 3 percent for users aged 13-15 and 10 percent for users aged 16-17, certified by an independent third-party testing provider and reviewed annually by an independent auditor appointed jointly by Meta and the Settling States.”

Moreover, “Meta’s own proprietary age assurance systems face equivalent accuracy requirements on a phased timeline, and must meet the same standards as certified third-party methods within two years.” That means that even if Meta wishes to pursue its internally developed profiling system, it still has to meet certified solutions in terms of accuracy and quality.

And, “the framework requires Meta to incorporate age signals from Apple and Google operating systems and app stores as one layer within its age assurance architecture, while making clear that these signals supplement rather than replace platform-level obligations.”

Finally, “the settlement also closes one of the most significant structural vulnerabilities in platform age assurance: the window between account creation and first age assessment. For the first 14 days after registration, all new users are treated as teen users regardless of their stated age. Thereafter, any user whose age has not been assessed is treated as a teen user regardless of what they have declared. New accounts can no longer be granted potentially dangerous unverified access from the moment of registration.”

Marking a major win for the private age assurance sector, AVPA Executive Director Iain Corby calls the settlement “the most significant intervention in children’s online safety we have seen.

“For the first time, a major social media platform has agreed to deploy independently certified age assurance technology meeting defined accuracy standards, subject to rigorous audits

“Every platform, every regulator and every legislator working on children’s online safety now has a roadmap to deliver a safer internet for children globally.  The age-aware internet is no longer a vision. Today it became a legal obligation.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  AVPA  |  biometric age estimation  |  lawsuits  |  Meta  |  social media