Meta reached an $18 billion multistate settlement last week. It agreed to improve age-checks of its social media users on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Meta was accused of designing social media to addict kids, and the settlement is aimed at curbing children's use of social media.
Legal hurdles and privacy issues
Meta has previously described both legal and practical roadblocks to stricter age assurance, including a 1998 federal law called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. This statute holds companies liable for damages if they collect personal data from children under age 13 without parental consent.
Meta and other social media companies have argued that this law puts them in a bind because it restricts them from collecting from children the kind of data that would reliably verify a person's age, such as IDs, biometric information or detailed records of their online activity.
Experts who advocate for better protections for children online have argued that social media companies have tried to use COPPA as a distraction to avoid taking responsibility for allowing children onto their platforms.
The $18 billion settlement, as well as a $942 million judgment in a New Mexico court case on August 6, have attempted to thread the needle, requiring more proactive age-verification measures without triggering potential violations of COPPA.
In New Mexico, the judge concluded that the online-privacy law restricted him from ordering Meta to ask children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, and said that strict age-verification requirements could put Meta at an unfair disadvantage to social media competitors. So the judge ordered changes intended to improve age assurances "within the limits of COPPA." The settlement uses a similar approach.
The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces COPPA for the U.S. government, issued a policy statement in February that it would not take action against any company that collects personal information for the sole purpose of determining a user's age via age-verification technologies.
Legal experts said that the FTC policy provides only a partial shield for companies because U.S. states have their own authority to enforce COPPA violations even when the FTC declines to do so.
Several states had sued Meta, alleging online-privacy violations, but dropped those claims as part of the settlement.
What changes the settlement requires
The settlement requires Meta to make broad changes related to users under 18, such as setting daily usage limits and disabling push notifications at night. It also calls for stronger age checks for young users, but it does not require Meta to take strict verification steps such as checking the photo IDs of users or asking them to upload a video selfie.
The settlement focuses particular attention on age checks for children below age 13, requiring Meta to take extra steps such as searching the friend networks of the accounts of the youngest users in an effort to identify and eliminate them. The company must also make it easier for social media users to report suspected children's accounts, and it allows an independent auditor to review Meta's efforts to check ages.
The settlement allows Meta to temporarily use some data generated by children it identifies in order to train an AI model to detect under-13 users in the future, similar to its current approach for identifying the accounts of suspected teenagers.
How Meta has determined ages until now
Meta policy bars children under 13 from using Facebook or Instagram and permits teenagers to use the platforms with some limits on content. Meta has acknowledged that younger users sometimes lie about their ages when creating accounts, and the company has faced increasing pressure from countries around the world to limit children's access to social media.
Meta has not historically asked users for proof of age such as a photo ID. Instead the company said it looks at contextual clues, like birthday posts or celebrations of school grades, to identify accounts that are being used by children.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in February that age verification would be more effective if it was handled by makers of mobile devices, an approach taken by a Texas state law that requires people under 18 to get parental consent before downloading an age-restricted app onto their device.
Meta agreed to the multi-state settlement, announced on August 26, to resolve legal claims that it designed social media platforms to addict children.
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