IN what has been described as “a watershed moment,” Meta Platforms has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and refit Facebook and Instagram to resolve claims by 29 states in the United States that it designed those platforms specifically to make online addicts of children.
In complying with a federal court ruling, Meta will limit nighttime usage of its two platforms by children and impose age-appropriate controls on content.
The social media colossus, which is worth about $1.47 trillion, faced a tsunami of lawsuits filed by states, local governments, school districts and individuals across the US. The overarching argument is that Meta and other social media companies have spurred a mental health crisis among young Americans.
Aside from introducing a “hard cap” on daily usage by youths, Meta also agreed to eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours.
Meta said “ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative.... We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”
$18 billion is not exactly pocket change, said one observer, “but it’s hardly a body blow” to Meta, which reportedly netted profits of around $16 billion in the last quarter alone.
What is significant is that Meta “is clearly signaling that it would like this litigation behind it. But it is not game over,” that observer added.
The decision will have a profound effect on Meta’s global platform infrastructure, as it resets the algorithmic configurations for Facebook and Instagram, which, together, have an estimated 400 million teenage users worldwide. The fallout will be felt by the Philippines, where the government is struggling to protect young online users from the threats that lurk on social media.
A string of school shootings has highlighted the role of social media in fueling such violent incidents and the urgent need to establish safeguards to prevent them from recurring.
For Sen. Erwin Tulfo, one approach is to hold social media platforms accountable for failing to keep violent and graphic content out of young users’ reach.
Tulfo is particularly incensed that images and videos of the school shootings proliferated on the internet before they were eventually taken down.
“Crime is not for entertainment. The suffering of a victim is not content. And the face of a child, whether a victim or a suspect, should not become viral material,” he said.
Other senators fully agreed with Tulfo. Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian said violent material could be a trigger for children already grappling with mental health issues.
“We do not know what the child is seeing and what the child might do because of what they watched,” he said.
According to the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, Philippine officials are hamstrung by jurisdictional limitations in forcing foreign platforms to immediately remove content that is harmful to the youth.
At least four proposed measures in Congress are aimed at social media platform accountability:
– The Children’s Social Media Safety Act (House Bill 9965) imposes fines of up to P40 million on tech platforms, and a ban on the platform from operating in the country, if the violation is severe enough.
– The Social Media Safety for Children Act (Senate Bill 2066), which compels tech companies to reset or alter algorithms that promote “prolonged or compulsive use” and lays down mandatory, secure age-assurance systems, features that hew closely to the Meta case.
– Online and Social Media Membership Accountability Act (SB 1289), which slaps huge fines on platforms that “privately profit” from high-profile violence or explicit material.
– The Anti-Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Materials Act, or Csaem (HB 2319), which forces social media networks to readily deactivate, or block access to, content relating to child exploitation.
The Meta settlement could be the game-changer in the Philippines’ campaign not only against online violence, but cyberbullying and Csaem, as well.
Meta’s commitment to impose a hard cap for young users could redefine safety settings for Filipino minors.
Using the federal court’s decision as a template, the Department of Justice and the Department of Trade and Industry could set up the legal framework to go after platforms that do not act decisively on content harmful to young users.
