| Geert Lovink via nettime-l on Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:11:06 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> Meta Settlement over Child Safety |
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/26/nx-s1-5944781/meta-settlement-child-safety-lawsuit I suppose you heard about the Meta settlement. Here is the response from Markus Beckedahl from Republica and digitalpolitik.de <http://digitalpolitik.de/> in Berlin. I translated it with Deepl: From: Markus Beckedahl <markus.beckedahl@newthinking.de> This really annoys me! Meta wins the child protection lawsuit against U.S. states with a $17 billion settlement—and a few conditions. That sounds like a hefty fine and a historic day. For Mark Zuckerberg, it’s a good day. The stock price skyrockets. Claims of up to $1.4 trillion were on the table, though the states themselves had cited a potential fine of around $200 billion. The final outcome is a fraction of that. There is no admission of guilt. The lawsuit, which could have truly posed a threat to Meta, is now off the table. This was about more than just screen time. The states accused Meta of deliberately designing its platforms to hook children, with endless scrolling and recommendations that encourage compulsive use. And they accused the company of collecting children’s data without parental consent and using it to train AI models. Meta has agreed to minor changes: daily limits and nighttime blocks for teen accounts. Features designed to encourage prolonged use must be disabled. These are tangible measures, all without any admission that there was ever anything wrong with the design. In court, Meta had argued that it could not have been deceptive because “social media addiction” is not a recognized diagnosis. The stock market shows just how seriously the company is taking the day. In pre-market trading, the stock rose by more than four percent. Measured against a market capitalization of around 1.4 trillion dollars, this gain is many times the settlement amount. 16.7 billion sounds like a lot. For Meta, that had long since been factored into the price. Mark Zuckerberg's strategy paid off. Many young people lost out. -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: https://www.nettime.org # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org