Meta 18亿美元和解儿童安全诉讼，施压同行加强保护

Meta is ramping up its public pressure campaign on other social media giants, including TikTok, to strengthen protections for underage users. Earlier this week, Meta agreed to pay up to $18,000,000,000 to settle a lawsuit over child safety. The agreement also including more than a dozen new safety protections for kids using its social media apps like Instagram. Meta's chief legal officer CJ Maloney released a statement following the settlement.

I'm proud both of the work Meta has done to protect kids historically and of this new groundbreaking agreement. But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta's lead. Alright. Joining us now is Beeban Kidron. She's an online safety advocate and the author of the book, Users. Can you explain why Meta settled only a few days after this trial began and just after the head of Instagram was asked about safety and transparency?

Yeah. Good good morning. Good to be with you. I mean, it is a pattern, and it is a sort of dispiriting pattern that, first of all, you know, we go to we go towards a trial, and it's a get yeah. It's a it's a face off, isn't it? Who's gonna who's gonna actually collapse first? And when the evidence was so fantastic at the opening of that trial with the Torah bear hair and and the questioning was so tough, suddenly, they blinked.

But there are some problems about the fact that they've actually, you know, they have actually canceled the trial and made a settlement rather than gone the whole way. But it is a big, big day for child advocates, for children, and for parents. What's interesting, the the 17 or $18,000,000,000 value compares to a company that's gross profit for last year was a $185,000,000,000. Is it a large win, or how would you categorize that windfall?

I I think where we should look is not at the money because I would agree with you that, you know, given their market cap, given their income, it it's it's poultry. I think where we have to look is that people are starting to say redesign your platform. We actually want you to take responsibility for the experience children are having online. And I think that's where we should look, and that's where some of the biggest wins are and maybe some of the the things that we lost on the way.

I they could have gone deeper and faster, but but what we are seeing now is tech companies are not protected by liability for the design of their products, and that's huge. You said there were some issues with the fact that it didn't the trial did not continue. What were those? Was it that you would have liked to see some of these stories come out more, or are there specific things that that you just won't see because the trial didn't keep going?

Well, first of all, we don't see Mark Zuckerberg on the stand. Secondly, we don't hear the detailed evidence. And I think people like me who read disclosure packs and and and, research information for for a decade or more already. We know what's wrong with meta. You know? But the public doesn't, and it brings it to life when you have a court case. I mean, the reporting around the trial was magnificent, but it's it's not just there in America.

It's all around the world. And that does something again for parents and for children to say, hang on a minute. People are arguing in, you know, in public that this is a toxic product, maybe my relationship with it should change. So I think that if we'd had a long drawn out trial, we'd heard all of the evidence, and we've seen some of those leaders, the top dog, on on the on the stand, I think that would have been better.

But I I do recognize it as a win, and I do think that all of these things are bit by bit by bit. And do remember, there's hundreds of trials upcoming. Well, looking at some of the restrictions, two hour time limit, blocking the app for school hours, how do you actually prove that you're a teenager using a platform? How do you actually get these protections for kids to be implemented? Well, I think that's a really excellent question to which I don't 100% have the answer in the sense of there are many ways to prove a child is a child.

There's third party age verification. We have it here in Europe with tokens. You don't even need to know who the child is, just what their age is. But there's there's also the the mere fact that someone company a like Meta actually do have a very good idea of how old their their user is from the way the user behaves. And and I've talked directly to the age assurance teams in some of these companies, and they they know pretty well for sure.

But I think the the question that part of your question is, you know, who's doing the checking and who is absolutely gonna follow this through? Because I was a bit concerned that the time period of this settlement was ten years. I mean, if you can imagine, you know, what what the digital world will be like in ten years, you know, you're better than I am. Because if we think about what it was like ten years ago, none of us had that idea.

Can you catch us up on how the bands, either the hard bands or soft bands, are going in places that have tried to implement them? I think Australia was the first. I know there's been action in The EU and I think The UK as well. Yeah. In Australia, they the you know, the jury is still out. There is some initial evidence that kids are getting round it, but there's also some initial evidence that the tech companies are not taking seriously the age assurance.

So gradually, what people are working out is that the responsibility for age has to rest with the tech company rather than with the parent or the child. And that way, you're gonna get a realistic, point of stoppage. I think the other thing that is really interesting is there are a growing number of children themselves who are saying, we love the ban. It's probably a bit late for us, but it'll be great for our younger siblings.

And that's been an amazing, amazing finding in Australia, across the EU, and also, in The UK. And I think that that increasingly, what we're going to see is a mix. We're gonna see a mix of here are some design things we don't want on your product, and here are some ages before which you may not serve children at all. And and speaking very personally, and I've been doing this, you know, fifteen years now, we really have to make sure that the product isn't toxic rather than ban the children because a lot of households now don't even have a landline or a phone.

That is so insane to me given how many hours I spent stretching out the cord on my mother's landline as a as a tween. Alright. Francine Lacqua, she's the author of users and, of course, an online safety advocate. It's nice to see you again.