Vermont will receive more than $92.7 million from Meta under a sweeping multistate settlement resolving allegations that the social media giant knowingly designed Instagram with addictive features that harmed children and teenagers, Attorney General Charity Clark announced Wednesday.
The $92,700,152 settlement resolves Vermont’s 2023 lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. Vermont alleged the company knowingly exposed young users to serious mental-health harms while misleading the public about the safety of its platforms.
Nationally, Meta could pay as much as $17.1 billion under an agreement involving 48 states along with the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories.
About $12.2 billion — 70% of the potential total — is guaranteed, according to Clark’s office. The remaining 30% would become payable if other major social-media companies, including TikTok, YouTube and Snap, reach substantially similar agreements with the states.
The settlement, which remains subject to court approval, would also require significant changes to Instagram and Facebook for children. Among them is a combined two-hour daily limit on the two platforms, with mandatory “Productive Pauses” after 15 minutes of continuous use and again after 60 and 90 minutes. Those restrictions would remain in effect for five years.
Children also would be blocked from accessing the apps between midnight and 6 AM. Push notifications would be disabled from 10 PM to 7 AM and during school hours — 8 AM to 3 PM on weekdays during the school year.
Meta also would be required to strengthen age verification and parental controls and provide additional safeguards against bullying and content involving eating disorders, suicide and self-harm. The agreement would limit features associated with social comparison, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts.
An independent auditor and the participating states would regularly assess whether the measures are being implemented and are effective.
Clark sued Meta in Chittenden Superior Court in 2023 as part of a coordinated multistate investigation. Meta later sought dismissal on grounds that Vermont courts lacked jurisdiction over the California-based company, but Vermont courts rejected that argument. The U.S. Supreme Court declined in May to hear Meta’s appeal, leaving the Vermont Supreme Court ruling intact.
The settlement also resolves state claims concerning Meta’s sharing of nonpublic Facebook user information with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, before the 2016 election.
Clark’s office characterized the national agreement as one of the largest state consumer-protection settlements in U.S. history outside the tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
Categories: Media
OK….She gets points for this move.
A few, not too many.
I can think of 92 million ways Vermont will squander the money. Use it instead for the children and teenagers. Develop a statewide curriculum for the schools that will yield a 75% proficient or advanced in math and reading. And require all schools to use the curriculum.
Who will benefit from the $92M settlement? Unfortunately, the recipients (bureaucrats) will use the money to line their pockets so they can say “See? Communism pays off!”
They will not use it to pay down the debt. They will not use it to pay down the cost of public education. At best, 5 cents on the dollar will go to tangible support for our kids, and that will be in the form of more Marxist indoctrination to convince them to join the collective party.
Not that I like Meta or any other of the big social media: I think they DO use psychological and 5th generation warfare to manipulate users. This settlement is a win-win for the globalists/socialists.
The best thing to do is to teach your children to avoid such nonsense.
If the criterion for bringing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit is that the purveyor “knowingly exposed young users to serious mental-health harms”, the public school system in Vermont had better be on notice. In defense of big tech in this matter, it is entirely inappropriate to use the term “addiction” to legally describe anything but an actual clinical substance dependence. The word gets thrown around way too much in the pursuit of victimhood signaling. If you have a problem with gambling, porn, sex, tennis, chocolate or computer gaming, it is an obsession or a compulsion, not an addiction. Even for those below the age of adulthood, living in a free society means having the freedom to indulge in some level of risk. If this legal action against an online content provider seems acceptable to a reasonable person, perhaps the same age restrictions that we apply to alcohol and cannabis should apply to using the internet.
Rich, the tech companies behind these apps intentionally design them to be addictive.
The makers of snickers bars and video games design them to be very desirable…but not addictive. Crack cocaine, nicotine and fentanyl are addictive.
Vt has become nothing more than ambulance chasers, it’s really the parents to blame for their kids addictions, they ultimately have the choice to allow the kids what they are exposed to, except while being indoctrinated in school, ha ha. Has anyone read Atlas Shrugs? Im not a supporter of Mark Zuckerberg, but when society attacks the builders of American enterprise, they all might just hang it up and leave the blood suckers to have a “go at it!”These numbers are staggering, Vermont will waste whatever they get out of it, it still doesn’t touch our unsustainable state employees pension fund, perhaps our roads could finally get fixed, but they’ll probably spend (waste) it in on some DEI initiative programs.
Of course we have no idea where this cash will actually go… but the greasy hands of the AG better not get one penny! The legislature should allot the bulk to the one true need in Vermont; a statewide School Choice and Voucher for homeschoolers project. Invest in choice and parents can be the main decision makers about these potentially dangerous And useful tools!
OBVIOUSLY we cannot trust our NEA-VT cabal to produce real results for our kids…
I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
Yes, homeschooling and trade school needs to be a valid choice for every child.
“Addictive or whatever, I would offer the same advice to someone who smokes crack, shoots opioids into their veins or spends any amount of time using social media…get a life.
Rich,
Your comments around here are prolific and consistent. You yourself are an active participant of social media.
Social media is any form of digital communication that lets users create online communities to share information, ideas, messages, and media.
Whether one agrees or not, VDC comment sections are an online community. We even use real names!
So if you’re reading this and commenting here, you’re willingly involved with social media. And Rich’s advice to you today is to “get a life.”
And your point?
This money will go to create new programs to “help kids”. The money will then run out and all of our taxes will increase because the programs will become permanent. This is how government works.
This is Scott’s chance to prove he’s a leader and be frugal.
When did parents give up responsibility for their children? Parents should be responsible for what their children do and watch. Social media should not be given to children. Changing children sex should not happen. Maybe it’s time we start prosecuting the parents for not taking care of their children. We could get them from neglect if they are not taken care of the their needs and we can charge them as pedophiles if they are forcing children to change their sex.
Allowing your children, or anyone’s children access to alcohol is a criminal offense for an adult, and it is possible to become literally addicted to alcohol. Allowing children to access facebook/meta was of little concern until this serious civil lawsuit came along, with the active participation of Vermont’s own Attorney General. You really can’t blame Twisted Tea or Seagrams if your kid is out having a drink behind the woodshed. I really can’t stand that twerp Mark Zuckerberg but I dont blame him for putting out a legal product that people want to make use of…that’s capitalism.
I think at least part of the money should go towards reading and writing programs for kids. I read somewhere only a third of Vermont’s kids are literate. Compared to other states, Vermont falls about middle (but still falls below Alabama, Kansas and Nevada). That’s embarrassing.