Florida has rejected a multistate settlement in which Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and adopt new child-safety measures on Facebook and Instagram, with Attorney General James Uthmeier saying the state will instead take its case against the company to trial, FOX reported.
“We’ll see them at trial,” Uthmeier said in announcing that Florida would not join the agreement, which Meta reached this week with attorneys general in dozens of other states to resolve a federal trial in Oakland, California, over claims that the company’s platforms fueled teen social media addiction.
Uthmeier called the settlement “peanuts” and a “slap on the wrist” for a company of Meta’s size. “Trying to wipe out a decade of harm to the nation’s youth with one month’s cash flow is an insult,” he said. In a follow-up post on X quoting Meta’s own release on the deal, Uthmeier added: “Corporations like Meta will never learn a lesson if they don’t incur real costs for breaking the law.”
The settlement, still subject to court approval, would resolve claims from 48 states along with Washington, D.C. and several U.S. territories, ending an avalanche of litigation that began when 29 states sued Meta in 2023. New Mexico is the only other state that did not join; it already took its case to trial and won earlier this year. The money would be paid out over a decade, with California set to receive the largest share, at least $1.5 billion.
As part of the deal, Meta agreed to a two-hour daily time limit for teens on Facebook and Instagram that parents can disable, a midnight-to-6-a.m. usage block, muted notifications during school hours, usage prompts at set intervals, hidden like counts, a ban on extreme cosmetic filters for teens, autoplay turned off by default and expanded parental controls. Meta has also called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt matching standards, saying teens who are restricted on one app simply move to another.
As FOX also reported, Florida’s rejection was echoed by Jennifer Mitchell, a New Port Richey mother whose 16-year-old son, Ian Ezquerra, died by suicide in 2019 after filming himself playing Russian roulette on Snapchat and posting the video. Mitchell, who sued Meta and Snap in 2022 in a case that remains active, said the settlement is not about the money for her but about consequences. “Meta wanting to settle just shows that they know that they had a part in a bunch of people’s deaths,” she said. “Sometimes you got to hit them where it hurts in order for a company to make a difference if they’re that big.”
Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and Mitchell’s attorney, said Meta’s new features are reasonable but do not address the underlying design. “First and foremost, the algorithms are still addictive,” Bergman said. “They still show kids not what they want to see, but what they can’t look away from.”
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
