Meta pledges to overhaul kids’ safety protections, pay $17 billion to settle social media case In a bellwether case for U.S. privacy and kids’ online safety rules, social media giant Meta agreed Monday to pay $17 billion and implement a series of landmark reforms, settling accusations that it knew and hid findings that its Facebook and Instagram apps are addictive. The settlement, agreed to just days into a civil trial, requires the tech giant to drastically overhaul its approach to how kids use its service. The plaintiffs included nearly every U.S. state and territory. The lawsuit also alleged Meta flouted the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), collecting data from kids 12 and under by relying on self-reported ages instead of facial recognition or other more rigorous age verification tools. The lawsuit, spearheaded by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, is widely considered a landmark for testing how courts will view social media harms and children. “It is an unprecedentedly high number,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said of the fine at a Wednesday press conference. “It’s the highest financial payment of its kind, way higher than opioids.” But Bonta said the large payout is nowhere near as important as the staggering range of reforms the attorney generals say Meta will implement. Meta has agreed to limit time on its apps to two hours per day for users under age 18; block youth from using the platforms between midnight and 6 a.m.; ban users under 18 from seeing “likes” or other reactions to their posts; and bar them from using cosmetic surgery image filters, according to Bonta. The settlement also requires Meta to offer young users the ability to have a “non-personalized” feed that is not shaped by an algorithm. Default blocks on notifications to users under 18 from