The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Jonathan Guilford
NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Mark Zuckerberg is often late to trends, but he tends to catch up in big ways. The Meta Platforms META.O boss bought photo-sharing startup Instagram, aped rival TikTok’s short-form videos and is now following his fellow tech moguls into artificial intelligence. An $18 billion settlement on Wednesday over allegedly hurting young users of his company's apps indicates a belated, albeit shrewd, grasp of where things are headed for the industry.
As with rivals such as Snap SNAP.N and TikTok, Meta faces a panoply of U.S. lawsuits accusing it of knowingly addicting children to screen-scrolling while exposing them to harm. This is only the latest among myriad complaints. The company struck a deal with authorities in 2012, and paid a subsequent $5 billion fine, in a case over violating privacy promises.
This week's agreement focuses largely on the latest hot-button issue: child safety. Among various other state efforts, Florida has already banned anyone under the age of 14 from opening a social-media account, while New York pushed night-time and algorithmic feed restrictions for users younger than 18. Congress hasn’t coalesced around national legislation, but emotional hearings on the issue continue.
It all adds up to significant pressure for change. Small wonder then that Zuckerberg ostensibly went big, both writing a sizable check and pledging to make meaningful changes to its apps.
Age verification, limiting 14-to-17-year-olds to two hours of usage and restricting night-time notifications sound promising in theory. Messaging and long-form content, however, are exempted. Moreover, the heart of Zuckerberg’s empire — its habit-forming, algorithmically generated, infinitely scrolling feed — is untouched, save for an easily dismissed option for a chronological feed.
The changes also only ratchet up to stricter standards if rivals enact similar policies. Some $5 billion of the payout similarly depends on it. This arrangement provides authorities a big incentive to press their cases against YouTube and others.
As a template, the settlement would be worse for Meta's rivals. Restrictions focused on short-form content are particularly bad for TikTok and Snap, which don’t have the ballast of restrictions-exempted WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. A slightly smaller proportion of teens uses Snap versus TikTok or Instagram, according to Pew Research surveys, but they're worth more when taking size into account. In that context, Meta is paying a small price to secure its industry status.
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