On Meta’s Settlement With the States

Casey Newton, writing at Platformer Wednesday: On Wednesday, whatever legal cover Meta’s Potemkin well-being teams were meant to provide fell to a settlement of up to $17.1 billion with 47 US states, the District of Columbia, and US territories… For the most part, the agreement requires Meta to honor terms that you may be surprised are not yet required by US law: limiting teens to a cumulative two hours across Facebook and Instagram per day, blocking access to most app features between midnight and 6 a.m., and muting push notifications — except for direct messages and account-security or safety alerts — from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days. (Also, the take-a-break prompts that saw such minimal adoption are now enabled by default, triggering after every 15 minutes.) In another reversal, Meta will also now hide like counts for teens by default. The move revives as a default an experiment known as “Project Daisy” that the company ran in January 2020 after research suggested that getting…