Kentucky and other states announce historic $17.1 billion settlement with Meta

FRANKFORT, Ky. – The office of the Attorney General announced that Kentucky and many other states, will be apart of a large settlement in a case against Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, and their practices when it comes to child safety online.

This agreement settles cases with 48 different states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C., however Kentucky joined three other states, California, Colorado, and New Jersey, in leading the way in federal court for the historic settlement.

The settlement, which was upheld by a California judge, in and Oakland, California courtroom will see Kentucky receive $358 million of that settlement.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement that he was pleased with the timing of the case as the week long court proceedings was thought to originally take between six to eight weeks. Coleman also stated that this is one of the largest consumer settlements in the history of the United States, comparing it to some of the most high profile cases the country has seen in the past.

“The settlement is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in the country’s history, comparable to the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s,” Coleman said in a statement to media.

As part of the agreement, Meta will also include new protective measure for children while they are accessing Facebook and Instagram. These measures include:

• Time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling.
• “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from midnight to 6 a.m.
• Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
• Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

Leaders with the group Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky says that these changes are just what was needed to help protect our kids.

“Some of the safety measures that are outlined in the settlement for some of those immediate courses of action or exactly what was missing” said Interim Director Janna Estep Jordan. “So some of the age limits, you know, it could it could be very easy for a child to go in and falsify an age to ensure that they can obtain an account.”

Meta has also called on other social platform and websites to follow in their steps and take similar measures.

The payments and changes will be implemented over the course of the next 10 years, and a third party auditor will regularly check to make sure Meta is following the terms of the settlement.

On top of the settlement, Kentucky will also receive an additional $7.5 million from another settlement where Meta shared non-public information about its uses with Cambridge Analytica.