Baton Rouge, LA – Today, Attorney General Liz Murrill furthered her commitment to protecting the children of Louisiana with the announcement of a landmark $12.19 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc., and legal action against Snap, Inc., and Discord. The announcement follows recent lawsuits filed by Attorney General Murrill against popular children’s platforms Roblox and TikTok for deceptively advertising themselves as safe for kids, as well as the arrest of more than 1,300 child predators through the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Meta

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

The Meta settlement will grow to $17.1 billion (and an additional $67 million for Louisiana) if Core Industry Members Snap, TikTok, and YouTube enter deals with similar injunctive and monetary relief.

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

The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:

● Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling.  These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, 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 on weekdays 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 young users.

● Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

● Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

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

Snap, Inc and Discord

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

In continuation of that same priority, legal action against Snap, Inc., and Discord was filed this morning in the 21st Judicial District of Louisiana. These companies profess that their platforms are safe environments for children to communicate, but nothing could be further from the truth. Snap and Discord are platforms that facilitate encrypted messaging and are frequently used by predators to evade detection and chat with children through games like Roblox.

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

The State is seeking injunctive relief and restitution.

Read the full settlement and filings here, (Discord and Snap filings will be added as soon as we receive official copies.)