Meta has agreed to pay up to US$17 billion over 10 years to settle claims brought by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. The states argued that the company deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to hook children into using its apps, misled the public about the harm and improperly collected data from children under 13.

The settlement, announced by Meta on Aug. 26, 2026, ended a federal trial that had barely begun in Oakland, California. The potential financial exposure in the case was enormous, and Meta’s stock price took a hit. The states argued that penalties could reach hundreds of billions of dollars.

Against that backdrop, and with a $1.4 trillion question mark hanging over its valuation, Meta settled, although the company continues to deny wrongdoing. The settlement still requires approval from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

As a technology policy and law scholar, I follow with interest the litigation against Meta and other social media companies. The basic contours of this settlement are now public, and I believe they deserve careful attention because of the product design changes it might compel Meta, TikTok and YouTube to make.

What the states alleged

The Oakland case consolidated lawsuits filed in 2023 by 29 state attorneys general following a nationwide investigation that began in 2021.

Similar to prior litigation in Los Angeles and New Mexico, the states alleged that Meta engineered features – for example, infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, likes and appearance-altering filters – to exploit vulnerabilities associated with adolescent development and to maximize engagement.

States alleged that Meta’s internal research documented links between Instagram use and harms including depression, anxiety and body-image concerns among young people, while the company publicly minimized or concealed those risks.

A third set of claims concerned Meta’s collection of data from children under 13 without parental consent, allegedly in violation of federal children’s privacy law. And the states argued that these practices violated state consumer protection statutes as well.

That consumer protection claim is particularly important. For decades, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has protected platforms from liability for content posted by their users. But the states sued Meta instead over the company’s own product design, business practices and alleged misrepresentations, not user-generated content.

In opening arguments, California’s lawyer compressed the theory into four words, noting Meta’s business model was to........

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