{"id":8904,"date":"2026-09-01T15:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T13:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/?post_type=hbi-news&#038;p=8904"},"modified":"2026-09-02T13:27:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T11:27:40","slug":"record-fine-and-new-social-media-guidelines-for-meta-a-high-profile-case","status":"publish","type":"hbi-news","link":"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/hbi-news\/record-fine-and-new-social-media-guidelines-for-meta-a-high-profile-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Fine and New Social Media Guidelines for Meta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following the billion-dollar settlement agreement in the lawsuit filed by 29 U.S. states against the media conglomerate Meta, the Science Media Center asked <a href=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/employee\/matthias-c-kettemann\/\">Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann<\/a> and other researchers to evaluate the sufficiency of the platforms\u2019 changes in ensuring their non-harmfulness, the potential difficulties of age verification, and the implications of this lawsuit for future litigation, including that from the European Union.<\/p>\n<p>Matthias C. Kettemann: &#8220;The settlement is the clearest evidence to date that platform design\u2014and not just content\u2014can be the subject of liability.&#8221; However, he adds, &#8220;Unlike a judgment, a settlement does not set a precedent and leaves open the central question of whether and to what extent platform design is a causal factor in the mental health issues experienced by young people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His full statement is available in German on the Science Media Center\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemediacenter.de\/en\/services\/historische-geldstrafe-und-neue-social-media-vorgaben-fuer-meta-26215\">website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Background<\/h2>\n<p>In a joint class-action lawsuit, 29 U.S. states accused Meta of intentionally designing the Facebook and Instagram platforms in a way that harms children and adolescents and leads to addiction.<\/p>\n<p>Meta has now agreed to a billion-dollar settlement that includes additional safeguards. As part of the settlement, Meta has committed to paying $16.68 billion to the plaintiff states. Additionally, the company has agreed to make fundamental changes to its youth protection measures. The following measures are planned:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Introducing a two-hour daily usage limit for teenage users<\/li>\n<li>Pausing notifications between midnight and 6 a.m.<\/li>\n<li>Disabling extreme beauty filters<\/li>\n<li>Hiding the number of likes on teenagers&#8217; posts<\/li>\n<li>Introducing an age verification system with maximum permissible error rates. No more than 10 percent of 16- to 17-year-old accounts may be incorrectly classified as over 18, and no more than 3 percent of 13- to 15-year-old accounts may be incorrectly classified as over 18.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8079,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8904","hbi-news","type-hbi-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.4 (Yoast SEO v28.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Record Fine and New Social Media Guidelines for Meta - Leibniz Institut f\u00fcr Medienforschung | Leibniz Institute for Media Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leibniz-hbi.de\/en\/hbi-news\/record-fine-and-new-social-media-guidelines-for-meta-a-high-profile-case\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Record Fine and New Social Media Guidelines for Meta\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Following the billion-dollar settlement agreement in the lawsuit filed by 29 U.S. states against the media conglomerate Meta, the Science Media Center asked Prof. Dr. Matthias C. 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