Overview
- Meta agreed this week to a settlement reported at roughly $18 billion with initial payments of about $12 billion and additional amounts tied to whether other platforms adopt similar measures.
- The deal requires U.S. minor accounts to face a two‑hour daily cap, notifications paused at night and during school hours, prompts to close the app at short intervals, hidden like counts for adolescents and non‑personalized default feeds for new teen accounts.
- Meta denied liability and said parts of the agreement are conditional on the conduct of competitors while some provisions will last five years and can extend to ten years if other firms follow suit.
- Court filings and witness testimony showed internal documents in which some employees described Instagram as addictive and described experiments with pause prompts that produced near‑zero uptake.
- A parallel Milan class action seeks structural remedies instead of cash payments, asking courts to force algorithmic changes, stricter age verification and an under‑16 ban with a key hearing set for November 19, 2026.