Attorney General Jackley Announces SD to Receive Minimum $52 Million in Multistate Settlement with Meta
PIERRE, S.D. – Attorney General Marty Jackley announces South Dakota will receive a minimum of $52,612,676 as its share in a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. It is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. South Dakota’s share of the settlement could grow to $73,480,057 upon certain conditions being met. South Dakota’s share will be paid out over the next 10 years.
The settlement is contingent on the approval of the agreement by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California which is hearing a lawsuit filed against Meta by South Dakota and 28 other states.
“Today’s historic settlement marks a significant milestone in our efforts to protect children online,” said Attorney General Jackley. “We have secured a record monetary award and meaningful safeguards for children and parents setting the new national online standard.”
By securing unprecedented injunctive relief and a record monetary award against any single company, we are ensuring that Meta is held accountable and that meaningful, lasting safeguards are firmly in place.
In addition, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. The agreement resolves claims by 47 other States and D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things. This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens.
The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:
● Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
● “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.
● Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
● Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
● Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.
● Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
● Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
● Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
Attorney General Jackley and nearly every other Attorney General in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After a bipartisan, nationwide investigation found that Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, 33 attorneys general sued Meta as part of a multistate coalition.
The settlement also resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica.
Other Attorneys General who signed the settlement are from Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
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