Mark Zuckerberg’s toxic empire is starting to crack

Finally, Meta gets its Big Tobacco moment. The tech giant’s decision to pay more than $17 billion (£12bn) to settle a landmark US lawsuit is being seen as a reckoning for a company that has got away with preying on children and ransacking its users’ data for decades. Meta will bring in time limits on how long teenagers can use Instagram and Facebook, and notifications will be silenced during school hours. But make no mistake: we should expect Meta to do everything in its power to get around these restrictions. Shorts The fact it took so long to get here is itself a staggering indictment of Big Tech’s influence and power. How many children are spending hours every day scrolling through endless videos chosen by an algorithm designed to keep them there? How many teenagers have had their self-esteem shredded by unrealistic images circulating on Meta’s platforms? At the more extreme end, how many children have committed suicide after being exposed to self-harm material on Instagram? If phones are the digital equivalent of cigarettes then Meta is Marlboro, hawking Instagram and Facebook to get kids addicted early and make them lifelong users. Instead of the Marlboro Man, Meta has Mark Zuckerberg, a greedy data vampire whose entire toxic business model needs a stake driven through its heart. Now that Zuckerberg is facing his biggest reckoning yet, that day is one step closer. The settlement was agreed in a case brought by 47 US states which claimed that Meta put children in danger because its platforms are so addictive. The states that sued were seeking $200 billion (£147bn) for the damage that Meta caused: the $17.1 billion settlement is expected to be approved by a judge. Zuckerberg who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony last year, is seen with his wife, Priscilla Chan, left, and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Photo: Kenny Holston/AFP via Getty Images) There are undeniably some positive things that have come out of it, like notifications being silenced from 8am to 3pm when children are in school. Younger users will be able to switch off autoplay features and there will be a time limit of two hours a day on Instagram and Facebook. But in a deeply manipulative move, $5 billion of the $17.1 billion is contingent on Meta’s rivals Snap, TikTok and YouTube settling with the states that sued and agreeing to similar changes. Meta is portraying this as setting a new standard across the industry and making out like it is a responsible corporate leader. Yet it seems like financial blackmail to ensure there is a level playing field across all social media. If the other companies don’t sign up it will put Meta at a competitive disadvantage, and with an annual revenue of $200 billion, that simply cannot happen. The deeper problem is that it is impossible to trust Meta and Zuckerberg, who have been caught out so many times their promises are meaningless. This is a company that has been accused of worsening civil wars by spreading misinformation, interfering in British democracy with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and has already been hit with massive fines including €1.2 billion (£1.03bn) from the EU. Meta only settled the latest case because it knows it is losing in the court of public opinion and is trying to limit the damage. Five months ago it lost its first personal injury case brought by an American woman who claimed she became addicted to Meta and YouTube when she was younger. Earlier this month, in a separate case, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay almost $1 billion for breaching consumer protection laws. Elsewhere in the world, Meta is under pressure like never before, including in Australia where the government banned social media for under-16s. The EU is considering doing something similar and Britain is set to follow suit early next year. The appalling cynicism of Meta’s staff has been laid bare by court documents in the US, which have showed an internal user experience researcher bragging about how “IG [Instagram] is a drug”. “We’re basically pushers”, a colleague responded. Against that background, it’s impossible to believe that Meta won’t find a way to get around the limits it is offering to impose on itself in the wake of the settlement. The company has proved again and again it does not operate in good faith: it only cares about its profits. The settlement is a good time to revisit the extraordinary report from 2021 in The New York Times, which recounted a meeting between Zuckerberg and Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, in 2019. Zuckerberg went to Cook for counsel about how to handle the Cambridge Analytica scandal but the response he got was scathing. Cook replied that Facebook should simply delete any information about its users that wasn’t needed for the company’s apps. The response left Zuckerberg stunned: Facebook’s entire business is about using that data to target ads to people and make money off it. Zuckerberg didn’t get it then and he doesn’t get it now because there’s too much on the line. Instead he will have to continue to defend the indefensible until users do the best thing they can to protect themselves and their children: delete Facebook and Instagram.