As he campaigns for U.S. House, Attorney General Marty Jackley can put an anti-Big-Tech feather in his cap. Meta/Facebook has settled the lawsuit that South Dakota and 28 other states joined to force Meta to pay for the damage it has done to America’s kids with its addictive social media products. Into a second week of trial, Mark Zuckerberg’s mind-control corporation has agreed to fork over up to $17.1 billion over ten years to litigating and non-litigating states and territories alike. Zuckerberg is getting out of court and any admission of wrongdoing for a penny and not quite a farthing on the dollar, given that the plaintiffs were seeking $1.4 trillion in damages. But $17.1 billion is a lot more than Meta has paid in past settlements to get government—i.e., us!—off its greedy back:
The agreement puts the social media giant’s payment at over 12-times higher than the previous highest settlement in the past four years—a mark Meta itself kept up to that point with its $1.4 billion settlement in 2024. At up to $17.1 billion, state attorneys general describe it as the largest state consumer-protection settlement outside of the tobacco settlements of the 1990s—and it is the largest settlement ever reached with a single company in the New York attorney general’s office (the previous being in 2022 with the state’s $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family over the opioid crisis).
Previous settlements surrounding children and teen safety include TikTok’s $400 million children’s privacy COPPA settlement in 2026, Meta’s $1.4 billion Texas biometric data privacy settlement in 2024, Google’s $1.375 billion Texas data privacy settlement in 2025, Meta’s $725 million Facebook user privacy settlement in 2023, and Google’s $391.5 million location-tracking privacy settlement in 2022 [Joshua Hong, “Meta’s $17.1 Billion Settlement Will Be over 12 Times Larger Than the Second Largest Big Tech Privacy Settlement in the Past Four Years,” Fortune, 2026.08.26].
But there’s a big catch: Meta will only live up to the full deal if YouTube and Tiktok also change their youth-predatory practices:
Participating states, for instance, will receive about 70% of the allocated payment over a decade. But the remaining 30% will be released only after two specific conditions are met. The first is that YouTube and TikTok implement a 1-hour daily limit, a restricted night mode, and age-verification measures. And the second is that each of the companies pays about $5.3 billion to fund youth online safety initiatives. If YouTube and TikTok pay up, so will Meta.
Several safety measures will also be strengthened should YouTube and TikTok sign on. The incentive structure works like this: Meta pays into a pot that its rivals must also contribute to. And while its engagement figures for young people will likely fall, it won’t be at a relative disadvantage if those measures are adopted by its largest rivals [Hamza Shaban, “Meta’s Settlement Is a Challenge to TikTok and YouTube,” Yahoo Finance, 2026.08.26].
Basing conditions on companies that aren’t party to the settlement seems on first glance like a dirty trick, but I can see the logic of the states: they get a big pot of money, and they get Meta to help them take a shot across the other big social mediators’ bows—match Meta’s contrite reforms, and we won’t take you to court.
If the settlement takes effect, South Dakota gets at least $52.6 million and up to $73.4M. The settlement [Exhibit C, p. 110] specifies that the money goes directly to the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Fund to be expended at “the sole discretion of the Attorney General, for any lawful purpose including those identified” in the settlement:
Payment Purposes. The amount paid to each Settling State shall be used for any lawful purpose consistent with the Settling State’s Attorney General’s authority, such as the following remedial or restitutive purposes:
- Crisis intervention services, specifically the expansion and operation of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and text-based youth crisis lines;
- After school or summer programs, such as sports, literacy, dance, and other activities;
- Public health advertising credits;
- A digital wellness public education fund;
- Funding outdoor activities;
- Youth mental health programming;
- Support the hiring of digital literacy counselors or implement phone-free school zones;
- Training for medical providers on interactive media use and body
dysmorphia;- Grants to school districts or other local government entities to accomplish any remedial purpose encompassed here;
- Any similar remedial or restitutive purposes as those described above; and
- Investigation, litigation, and related efforts to improve teen safety on social media.
Law Enforcement Costs. Consistent with the Settling State’s Attorney General’s authority, a Settling State’s Attorney General may designate a portion of the amount paid to each Settling State for Attorneys’ Fees and Expenses, litigation costs, any pre-suit or post-suit investigation costs, and any other law enforcement costs [Meta and State Attorneys General, Proposed Consent Agreement, People of the State of California et al. v Meta Platforms, Inc. et al., United States District Court of Northern California, filed 2026.08.26, Exhibit A, pp. 38–39].
Beyond giving Lance Russell some mad money, Meta is agreeing to make changes to its social media products to protect children:
[California Attorney General Rob] Bonta’s office also said Meta had agreed to a default time limit of two hours for users under 18 and a nighttime block between midnight and 6am, both of which can only be lifted by a parent; default night and schooltime notification blocks; a ban on displaying the numbers of “likes” or reactions to posts made by minors; a ban on cosmetic surgery image filters for minors; and an option for young users to have a “non-personalized feed” that is not run by an algorithm targeting them with content [John Ruwitch, “Meta, States Agree to $17 Billion Settlement in Child Safety Trial,” NPR, 2026.08.26].
Hey, I’m not a kid, but I’d sure like to have the non-personalized no-algorithm feed option!
Meta has lied before about its intentions and innovations to prioritize profit over customer safety, and as elitist surveillance capitalist bastards determined to eradicate the right to privacy, Zuckerberg et al. will likely lie again, The settlement will also put some outside eyes on Meta to catch their lies:
Meta must also bring on an independent auditor with “expansive access to information and resources” and the right to communicate with the attorneys general, the announcement said, and would also be subject to an injunction “prohibiting it from making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features” [Ruwitch, 2026.08.26].
Reining in Facebook and Instagram and maybe Tiktok and Youtube is a good step. Now we need to work some cultural reform to get kids, parents, and every other human to step back from their Like and Subscribe buttons and surrender less of their lives to Big Tech.
“Non-personalized feed”. I don’t know what this will look like for teens, but the non-personalized feeds are worse than what I try and curate. If there’s a feed, then something is choosing what goes into it.
Get rid of feeds (trough is more like it) and algorithms that try to figure out what you like. Sometimes they find something good, but they’re not worth the problems they cause.