Below is my column on Fox.com on the Meta settlement over social media harms. These damages often seem like monopoly money for a corporation that could wipe out the loss in the market and pass on costs to consumers. If so, Mark Zuckerberg just pulled a community chest card to collect money from every other social media player.
Here is the column:
It is not every day that a company can settle a case for over $16 billion and celebrate. However, Meta’s settlement with 29 states is a remarkably good deal for a company facing a demand of over $1.4 trillion and years of litigation. In the end, it may not even take a loss from the litigation.
The settlement ends the latest mass liability case, following similar settlements in tobacco, opiates, and other products. It will require Meta to make changes to its platform, though the company already appeared to be moving to make such changes.
The maximum payment of closer to $17 billion is tied to whether competing platforms (like TikTok and YouTube) adopt parallel protections for children. Otherwise, the company is on the hook for at least $12.1 billion over 10 years under the agreement.
The company agreed to impose daily time limits for underage users as well as “nighttime blocks” from midnight to 6 am (as well as notifications linked to school hours).
It is doubtful that these “fixes” will actually fix the problem. Social media is enormously popular with adults and children alike. It is also ubiquitous and accessible, particularly for tech-savvy kids. The burden will remain with parents regarding access to and use of social media, not the company.
Meta was looking at a long slog in the courts. Some of us were skeptical of the legal basis for some of these claims. The line between a popular and an “addictive” product is fairly subjective. It was hard to see where the line would have been drawn in this litigation. However, Meta likely would have faced similar demands for changes to its platforms through legislation even if it prevailed in litigation.
Those legal questions will now have to wait for another test case. The settlement leaves other companies in a more exposed position. This massive settlement is like a dinner gong for plaintiff’s lawyers who will now fan out in packs in pursuit of companies like dusk on the Serengeti. Companies are already facing thousands of such lawsuits.
Meta has already lost cases in California and New Mexico over consumer safety and negligence claims. The priority was to limit the potential damages rather than to make new law.
The actual damages are not as daunting as it may seem. The tobacco multistate settlement was over $206 billion, not counting separate state settlements worth tens of millions more. The opiate settlements resulted in damages of roughly $60 billion.
Even at $16 billion, for a company the size of Meta, this is like monopoly money (literally so, if you ask some critics). The value of settling the case alone can wipe out that loss through stock-market gains and other pricing changes. After the tobacco settlement, companies like Philip Morris enjoyed market gains that effectively washed out the loss. Moreover, these companies enjoyed a very inelastic market, so they internalized costs with price hikes that left smokers holding the bag.
Ironically, if social media is as addictive as claimed by litigants, the market is equally inelastic. Big media will be able to easily recoup these damages as did Big Tobacco. Much of these damages will ultimately be passed on to and borne by social media users, operating like a tax for states receiving the funds.
The platform will clearly make positive changes that will assist parents. These are straightforward changes that have long been needed. Hopefully, these states will not just take this money and run as many did with the tobacco windfall. Instead, it would be a great help if the money went to enhancing programs for child mental illness.
Social media remains one of the most transformative inventions in history, including a powerful tool for free speech and political discourse. That popularity comes at a price. It will remain part of our social fabric, as are alcohol and tobacco products despite their abuse.
Meta did not create these social costs alone. We all did. We found ourselves overwhelmed by a technology with endless applications and potential for expression. This settlement will not erase those social costs any more than the tobacco settlement erased cancer or the opiate settlement erased addiction. The ultimate child-protection regulation will remain parents monitoring and educating their own children.
Meta’s corporate slogan, “Meta, Metamates, and Me,” may capture the problem. It is often hard for people to separate themselves from their virtual selves. This is a technology that is both liberating and captivating. Ultimately, despite the progress under this agreement, no settlement will protect us from ourselves.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
OFF TOPIC ~ F.Y.I.
USCP Arrests Driver with Guillotine in Truckbed
The United States Capitol Police (USCP) seized a guillotine, which was spotted in the bed of a pickup truck along the 100 block of East Capitol Street.
By: United States Capitol Police ~ August 25, 2026
https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-arrests-driver-guillotine-truckbed
D.C. – Judge releases man accused of driving guillotine to Supreme Court
‘He didn’t even threaten anyone,’ the judge said. The California man, who is charged with a misdemeanor, told police the guillotine was the ‘real deal,’ according to an arrest report.
By: Ben Conarck – The Washington Post ~ August 25, 2026
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/08/26/judge-releases-man-accused-driving-guillotine-supreme-court/
Moral of the story is:
Don’t be driving around with your Guillotine in your Billy Bob truck bed. Even if you’re going to the carwash to wash off the blood.
Great deal for Meta, which got to design the changes, optimized for it’s business model. Pressure on other social media companies to go along with Meta’s design, the cost of which they must amortize over much smaller user bases. Meta also used the election cycle, as state officials can campaign on their big money settlement. Money is fungible, so it will go not necessarily to improvement in kids’s health, but improvement in the poll numbers of the politicians in charge of spending it.
If you expect business to do the responsible thing, you have to first unambiguously define what that is. I see two primary issues here, that naturally break down into even more sticky issues.
1) Just what exactly are social media actions and content that are legally acceptable/unacceptable?
2) How can an online business tell the difference between a minor and an adult in a way that is legally sufficient yet doesn’t require consenting adults to sacrifice their privacy rights.
1: A business should be able to expect the law to provide an unambiguous answer to that question, yet it does not. Expecting businesses to guess the answer to that question is not fair or reasonable. Businesses exist to create profit for their owners (part of the IRS definition). Generally speaking, the more profit the better within the limits of the law and hopefully some basic level of morality. Users of social media will generally not pay for the service and anyone with the ability to reason should know that the service is paid for through advertising income – getting users to consume ad copy AND/OR provide information about the user that allow advertisers to better target their advertising. That is the ‘contract’ between the user and the business. Limiting user’s access to the service is generally not in the business’s interest, and in some cases could even be illegal. If the law intends to require the business to limit the service, it needs to specify those limitations unambiguously and in a way that is technically and practically possible for the business to implement.
2: I think the answer to this one is that it can’t. That means that some compromise needs to be made either to the requirement (telling an adult from a child) or protecting privacy rights. If you compromise on the requirement to tell adults from children, you pretty much have the current situation, and you shouldn’t fault the business for failures if a child user misrepresents themselves as an adult. On the other hand, forcing adults to provide identity before speaking quickly transforms into a first amendment quagmire as it can have a ‘chilling effect’ on what they feel comfortable saying. Having said that, I think that eventually we’re going to see some technological solution in the form of a national (or global?) digital ID that can be used to provide semi-anonymous age verification (see https://avpassociation.com/ for current state of the art). Anyone who doesn’t totally trust Government or Big-Business is likely to be unhappy with that, but if society insists on different online rules for adults and children, I can’t imagine any other solution that can provide businesses with the legal protection they need in our current litigious climate.
BTW: I haven’t mentioned parental responsibility here because I don’t think parents currently have the tools required to effectively limit their children’s access to social media. Children disobey their parents regularly and are often more technically literate than their parents. Creating the tools parents would need to effectively limit their access will require someone working out a solution to the 2nd question above first.
I’m unimpressed by the libertarian opinions saying parents can and should supervise their childrens’ media habits and consumption. It would be different if the workplace allowed adults to bring their children to work. It would be different if parents didn’t need any sleep time. It’s unrealistic that parents maintain 24/7 vigilance — that’s impossible — and that’s why we have these lawsuits demanding the tech platforms help parents with the needed supervision.
This is just the beginning of the blowback against the enormous concentration of power in these media-tech giants.
I wouldn’t mind seeing their biz plans eviscerated, and go back to thousands of smaller size media operations supported by local advertising.
The Founders warned against over-centralization of power, and here we are with corporations so enormous that the legal system finds itself barely able to establish even minimal, common-sense regulations.
Given the effects of Social Media (i.e.: Facebook, etc.) and the rise in political advertising to wit weaponizes targets with “identity politics”, Adults are susceptible to the effects of social media political-grooming (Ad campaigns) in a similar manner as Children.
Nothing Left (Except Corporate-Friendly Identity Politics)
Evan Barker’s debut book exposes the rot hollowing out the Democratic Party.
In Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, Evan Barker, a former fundraiser for the party, offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at that evolution.
By: Harrison Berger – The American Conservative ~ Aug 22, 2026
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/nothing-left-except-corporate-friendly-identity-politics/
What’s the $18 billion being used for?
Last time, Mark Z gave a $100 million to Newark NJ.
Uses include trips to Las Vegas, mink coats, BMW, kitchen & bathroom upgrades.