Aggrostats

Today,Attorney General Liz Murrill furthered her commitment to protecting thechildren of Louisiana with the announcement of a landmark $12.19 billionmultistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc., and legal action against Snap,Inc., and Discord. The announcement follows recent lawsuits filed by AttorneyGeneral Murrill against popular children’s platforms Roblox and TikTok fordeceptively advertising themselves as safe for kids, as well as the arrest ofmore than 1,300 child predators through the Internet Crimes Against ChildrenTask Force.

Meta

The Metasettlement is the largest state consumer protection settlement in historyoutside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. In addition to the payment,Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protectchildren on Instagram and Facebook. The agreement resolves claims by 47 otherStates that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowinglyexposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled thepublic about the safety of its platforms, among other things. This settlementis a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and willfundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs productsfor kids and teens. Under the settlement, Louisiana will receive over $180million ($180,878,138) across nine years. Louisiana’s involvement washandled “in-house,” with no outside counsel fees.

The Meta settlementwill grow to $17.1 billion (and an additional $67 million for Louisiana) if CoreIndustry Members Snap, TikTok, and YouTube enter deals with similar injunctiveand monetary relief.

“Thissettlement is an earthquake when it comes to child safety reforms and Big Techaccountability. This isn’t a payoff—it’s meaningful reform that gives Louisianathe tools we need to focus on the safety of our children in the digital world,”said Attorney General Liz Murrill.

The settlementrequires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram andFacebook, including:

● Hardcap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagramand Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interruptendless scrolling.  These limits remainin effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparableterms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.

●“Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

●Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications onweekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.

●Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of youngusers.

●Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

● Boththe implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed byan independent auditor and the settling states.

The settlementalso resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublicinformation about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica,leading up to the 2016 election. Louisiana’s additional share of $7,624,784has been added to the settlement.

Snap, Inc andDiscord

Attorney General Murrill also acknowledged that this problemextends well beyond one company and credited Meta for being the first majorplatform to reach a comprehensive resolution on youth safety. “Meta stepped up and did theright thing. Now it’s time for other Big Tech and gaming companies to do theright thing as well. I’ve made the protection of our kids the priority of myadministration, and I won’t stop until industry is held accountable, parentsand children are informed, empowered, and protected, and those who would harmour most innocent are locked away behind bars,” said Attorney General LizMurrill.

In continuation of that same priority, legal action againstSnap, Inc., and Discord was filed this morning in the 21st Judicial District ofLouisiana. These companies profess that their platforms are safe environmentsfor children to communicate, but nothing could be further from the truth. Snapand Discord are platforms that facilitate encrypted messaging and arefrequently used by predators to evade detection and chat with children throughgames like Roblox.

“There’sa reason that my office continues to find child sex predators on theseplatforms. It used to be that a parent could finally go to sleep at night oncetheir child was at home and in bed. Now, through platforms like Snap andDiscord, the predator is already in their bedroom—on their phone, gamingdevice, or tablet,” continued Attorney General Liz Murrill.

The State is seeking injunctive relief and restitution.

Read the full settlement and filings down.

Full Settlement Agreement

Snap, INC.

Discord