[Tech Thoughts] Meta’s settlement with US states, and the hope for change in social media

Meta's US settlement feels like a PR win for its team, even as critics like ex-Meta executive Arturo Bejar slam the company by calling the settlement insufficient Meta Platforms has agreed to a settlement of up to $18 billion with several US states, implementing changes to Facebook and Instagram aimed at reducing social media's impact on teens. The planned changes include time limits for teen users, modes to restrict access during bedtime and school hours, prompts for breaks, and enhanced privacy settings to protect teens from potential dangers. Critics argue that while the settlement is a step forward, it does not address the root issues of social media addiction and may place too much responsibility on parents for monitoring their children's usage. This is AI-generated. Read the article for full context. Report any errors. Meta Platforms has settled with a number of US states, promising to pay up to about $18 billion over the next 10 years while promising to institute changes to Facebook and Instagram. While Meta denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle, and the company still faces plenty of lawsuits in a similar vein, the settlement feels like a PR win for Meta’s team, even as critics like ex-Meta executive Arturo Bejar slam the company by calling their settlement insufficient. It’s a good idea to unpack what these changes are for Meta’s two social media platforms, and what they could mean for all of social media. Let’s get to it. What’s changing in Facebook, Instagram? Meta, in a post on August 26, announced its actions to lessen the impact of social media use on teens. Below are the changes they’re planning to implement over time: Setting time limits: Meta will ascribe a two-hour time limit that teen users can only turn off with parental permission, and works cumulatively across Facebook and Instagram use. Further, time spent on either app counts toward this time limit total, and Meta can even tell if a user has multiple accounts. Night Mode and School Mode: These two modes restrict access to Facebook during bedtime and school time. Night Mode blocks use from midnight to 6 am, while School Mode mutes notifications from 8 am to 3pm, with the exception of direct messages and safety and security alerts. Prompts to take breaks: Teens will get prompted to take breaks after 15 minutes of continuous Facebook or Instagram use, and will be alerted if they’ve reached the 60-minute and 90-minute marks for their time-limited usage. Algorithmic Feed Control: Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed, or a feed that isn’t personalized by recommendation systems as their default option. Meta will also periodically remind users the option exists, while parents can set their children’s default experience to require this setting. Control of automatic play settings: Teens can turn off autoplay settings such that they need to tap or swipe to see more — basically adding friction to endless scroll mechanisms. Hiding engagement and some image filters: Teens will be unable to see the amount of likes and reactions on posts, whether it’s their own posts or posts from others. This will become a default setting. Meanwhile, image filters for cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup will also be disabled for teens. Investing in better age checks: Meta said it would be “investing in even stronger technology to proactively catch accounts that may belong to under-13s” alongside strengthening the technology it uses to identify users between the ages of 13 and 17. This is to prevent users who say they’re older by using adult birthdays from bypassing content settings meant for those in the teens age group, such as preventing teens from following or interacting with age-inappropriate accounts. Preventing ‘stranger danger’ scenarios: Meta will default teens into private accounts on Instagram and private default settings on Facebook, so as to restrict potentially suspicious adults from contacting them. The company also promised to strengthen efforts to make it harder for those adults to find, follow, or interact with teens. Moderation promises: Meta promised “easy ways to report content that concerns them” alongside working to improve company response times to reports and evaluating teen exposure to potentially harmful experiences to better improve how they operate. Parental controls: Meta will encourage parents to use supervision tools and provide them with new controls and insights, such as telling parents when a teen sets up a secondary account, alerting them to interactions with potentially suspicious accounts, and giving status updates on teen usage and any attempts to change protective settings that have been introduced. Additionally, press releases from California and the District of Columbia have also said that an independent auditor will periodically assess Meta’s work on these safety features. Meta said this would be happening over a five-year period. According to the California release, the independent auditor will have “expansive access to information and resources, regular reporting, and the right to communicate concerns to the Attorneys General.” Lastly, the agreement will also set up an independent social media research foundation. The company wrote, “Meta will share consented user data with the foundation to advance independent research into teen well-being and grow our collective understanding of how to best support teens online.” Meta pushing others to follow suit Meta is also “encouraging industry-wide adoption” or getting competing social media services such as TikTok and YouTube to follow suit. Meta has promised to strengthen some of the settlement provisions if other companies join in. Said Meta: “The majority of the terms are required to remain in place for 10 years, but our Time Limit and Night Mode features will start with a five-year commitment. However, if industry peers sign on to the agreement, it will both extend this commitment to 10 years and prompt stronger default limits — reducing the Daily Limit to one hour per app and expanding Night Mode hours to 10:00 PM-7:00 AM (up from midnight-6:00 AM).” Is it enough? Personally, I’m inclined to agree with former Meta employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar. Bejar, in a report by The Guardian, compared social media platforms to the tobacco industry. “The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day,'” he said. He added, “It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.” Further, putting some of the onus of curbing addictive behavior in social media platforms on parents is, as like with Roblox’s onus on parental supervision, a platform failure. It doesn’t address the root problem, which is the design choices that make social media addictive to begin with. These will not be solved by an independent audit which, by the way, has yet to have details on how the auditor will be chosen and how much and what access that auditor will have to Meta. These will also not be solved by a research foundation, especially if Meta has its hooks in it. As Bejar noted: “As with tobacco and opioids, the product continues to be harmful after the settlement. The work needs to continue in order to make sure that it’s safe enough for young people.” While it is currently unclear if these changes will be made worldwide — I certainly hope they make their way to other countries, including the Philippines — the hope of many of those concerned is that the settlement translates not only to changes in Meta’s social media platforms, but also to competing offerings. Time — and a really good auditor — will tell if these adjustments will enable positive change across social media. But if if we were to really get something good out of social media, we may have to strip it down to its roots and rebuild from scratch, a task made difficult by the economic and political power of big tech, which fights, and sometimes survives, attempts to bring about lasting change. – Rappelr.com How does this make you feel? Loading