by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — A landmark $17.1 billion settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. will enforce sweeping new safety reforms on Instagram and Facebook, according to Attorney General William Tong.
The agreement between Meta and 51 attorneys general will see Connecticut receive up to $265.4 million, with at least half of all funds directed to remediate youth harms from social media, including but not limited to support for mental health and crisis intervention, after school and summer school programming, and implementation of phone-free school zones.
The agreement resolves claims that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things. The settlement also resolves the multistate investigation led by Connecticut against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election.
“Meta strip-mined the souls of America’s children for maximum profit with abusive and addictive features that unleashed a youth mental health catastrophe. That ends now,” Tong said in a Wednesday morning press conference. “This settlement charts a new course for online safety, enforcing sweeping reforms to fundamentally alter the experience for kids on Instagram and Facebook.”
Tong said Meta must deploy robust age verification measures, online time caps, parental options to turn off algorithmic feeds and auto-play functions and content moderation, among other measures.
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