Tangle - The Meta settlement.

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

On Wednesday, Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads, reached a settlement with a group of state attorneys general to pay up to $16.7 billion to resolve a case over alleged harms to children caused by its social media apps. The company also agreed to implement safeguards designed to mitigate excessive use of Facebook and Instagram by minors.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!The latest Suspension of the Rules.Is decency back? Isaac, Ari, and Kmele discuss a fascinating gubernatorial candidate in Iowa and an interesting couple of moments from a Fox News anchor before Ari gets canceled in a highly aggrieved grievances section. Check it out here.All about Flock cameras.A few months ago, you may not have heard of them at all. Now, Flock cameras are everywhere — especially in Northern Virginia, where Associate Producer Aidan Gorman lives. In our latest YouTube video, Aidan takes a trip around his neighborhood and talks with law enforcement to investigate the reach and presence of Flock cameras.Check it out here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What new safety measures will be most effective? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast. Place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I am your host, Isaac Saul. It's a rain-soaked and unusually cool August morning here in northern New Jersey, Thursday, August 27. This weekend, I'm taking my 19-month-old song. on his first ever camping trip. So, you know, bracing for some rough nights of sleep,

probably going to be a little insane. I am determined to make sure that this kid spends as much time outside as possible in every phase of childhood. And I'm feeling pretty confident that, you know, these experience will kindle a lasting love of nature and the outdoors and hopefully, you know, some time with dad. But I also have no idea what I'm doing. So if you have tips, advice for camping with an under two kid, I'm all ears.

Isaac, I-S-A-A-A-C at reetangle.com, write to me before Friday afternoon, which is when I'm leaving for this camping trip. Speaking of time outside and love of the outdoors, today's main topic is about the other side of the coin. Harm caused by social media addiction. We are breaking down the meta lawsuit and the settlement, what it means for screen time and our children going forward. We also have a reader question about flock cameras and a very feel-good story about how one shelter helped a cat walk again.

It's going to be a great episode. I'm joined by senior editor Will Kayback, who's going to break down today's main story. And I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac. All right, here are today's quick hits. Number one, flash floods along the Nepal-China border killed at least 270 people with over 1,4,400. 50 still missing. A preliminary assessment suggested that the floods were caused by a glacier partially collapsing with a large ice segment falling thousands of feet and crashing into the Botakoshi River.

Number two, the federal judge who issued a nationwide injunction blocking part of President Donald Trump's executive order on mail-in ballots, lifted the decision, citing the Supreme Courts ruling that the lawsuits challenging the order were brought prematurely. Number three, the Secret Service suspended three officials amid an internal investigation into potential misconduct. The basis of the investigation is unknown, but the three officials do not work in law enforcement roles at the agency. Number four, a circuit court judge struck down a planned ballot question in Maryland that would have asked voters whether to approve changes to the state's redistricting rules. Maryland Governor West Moore, a Democrat, said that his office is appealing the decision. And finally, number five, Russia is reportedly preparing to escalate its attacks on Ukraine as peace negotiations stall.

A landmark settlement today in the trial of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Prosecutors accused the tech giant of designing the apps to be addictive to children and teenagers. And the company today agreed to pay up to 18. billion dollars totaled to states including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. But more importantly, META also agreed to make sweeping changes to the apps to alter how young users interact, including blocking access to the sites for anyone under 18. On Wednesday, Meta platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads, reached a settlement with a group of state attorneys general to pay up to $16.7 billion to resolve a case over

alleged harms to children caused by its social media apps. The company also agreed to implement safeguards designed to mitigate excessive use of Facebook and Instagram by minors. In 2023, 33 states sued META, alleging that the company had, quote, repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms, end quote, and concealed how its products were harming children. The suit claimed that META harvests young users' data for targeted assets. advertising. It also said that features like recommendation algorithms, visual filters, and disruptive autovisual notifications, quote, harm young users' mental and physical health.

The trial in the case began on August 18th in Oakland, California, and META said in a filing that it could pay up to $1.4 trillion in damages if it lost. California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill said in her opening statement that META, quote, knew a lot about kids brains, end quote, and would attempt to, quote, hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public when making public statements, end quote. Former meta executive Arturo Behar testified that the company had conducted research into safety issues related to young users, but scrapped many of the subsequent recommendations. Lawyers for meta highlighted the, quote, meaningful evidence that the company has prioritized young

user safety and implemented a litany of features to address concerns about its platforms. In a separate statement, the company said, quote, we've listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand issues that matter most. Wednesday's settlement resolves various state-level litigations against Meta, though it still faces lawsuits from individuals and school districts. Separately, it was ordered in a civil suit earlier this year to pay close to $1 billion in fines for failing to warn the public about dangers its platforms posed to children. In a statement, Meta said that it will add new restrictions to minors' use of its platforms as part of the settlement. Those include screen time limits, blocking

access between midnight and 6am, muted notifications during school hours, and access to additional parental controls. The company also called on TikTok and YouTube to implement similar measures, saying, quote, these protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers, end quote. 30% of the settlement, approximately $5.3 billion, is contingent on TikTok and YouTube adding these restrictions and matching that total in payments to support youth online safety initiatives. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the settlement, quote, addresses the concerns at the core of our lawsuit and institutes real change, real transparency, and real and for children on Facebook and Instagram. Now you'll hear views from the left and right on the settlement,

and then executive editor Isaac Saul will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the left is saying. The left is mixed with some saying the settlement will positively impact teens. Others suggest lawsuits are a poor strategy for regulating social media. Still others lament the relatively small financial penalty for meta. In Bloomberg, Dave Lee said meta finally did the right thing for teens. Make no mistake, while the amount that the company agreed to pay to settle a lawsuit brought by several states, up to $18 billion, is large. It is dwarfed by the significance in the long-tail positive effects this so-called big tobacco moment

will have on the well-being of teens. Daily screen time limits, no notifications during school hours, auto-play disabling, non-alorithmic feeds, a midnight to 6am lockout to pick a few. Even better are age-gating measures to block underage users

and further protect teens. Meta shouldn't receive too much credit. After all, it was only after losing bellwether addiction cases with several more lingering, that executives finally found it within themselves to agree on settings for meta's apps that by all accounts should have been the default long ago. This settlement is tangible progress and proof that a well-constructed

case can bring accountability to technology companies. Meta, for all its faults, and under obvious duress, has produced an impactful and technically feasible list of ways to start to put things right. In the American prospect, Ryan Cooper asked, is this social media's big tobacco moment? Over the years, I have become firmly convinced that social media, at least in its current big tech-dominated forum, is a gravely toxic institution. Causing mental health problems among youth is not even close to the worst thing that these companies have done. There's strong evidence that smartphones and social media are major drivers behind increased loneliness, the worldwide decline in coupling and birth rates, as well as the global surge in racism and fascism. In many ways, a lawsuit is a highly

suboptimal way to regulate anything, including social media companies. But with astronomical penalties being proposed and the possibility of structural remedies, in other words, meta might have to change its design features in Facebook and Instagram that are known to addict people, the outcome might end up a fair bit better than the cost of doing business. And with our ever more paralyzed Congress and hypertrophied court system, lawsuits are often the only way to get anything like accountability. In Newsweek, Shane Croucher called the settlement a grim bargain. The tell came immediately from the stock market. Meta shares rose 4.4% in pre-market trading Wednesday,

as the company agreed to a proposed settlement worth up to $16.68 billion over child safety claims. It's a reaction that captures the somewhat perverse economics of penalizing one of America's richest companies. The social media giant's latest financial numbers explain why investors could see relief, where everyone else sees a punishing bill. In the second quarter alone, the company reported $60.8 billion in revenue and $15.8 billion in net income. Almost $17 billion amounts to only little more than three months

of meta's recent earnings. Pocket change, really. American corporate power has reached a scale at which $16.8 billion can sound historic and yet still be entirely affordable, profitable even for shareholders who just enjoyed a 4.4% bounce in their meta holding, and that's all on the backs of our children.

And now here's what the right is saying. The right is also mixed, with some advocating for personal responsibility over targeting tech companies. Others say meta's platform changes won't adequately address social media addiction. Still others support the outcome of the settlement. In the American Spectator,

Stephen Greenhut wrote, it's time to stop viewing innovations as public nuisances and start taking responsibility for our own lives. That's some moxie to blame a single company for damaging the mental health of 73 million American miners. This sounds like suing auto manufacturers for including features, heated seats, automatic transmissions, adaptive cruise control, and satellite radio that encourage people to drive. After all, nearly 37,000 Americans died in vehicle collisions in 2025. So the manufacturers must be to blame for designing cars in a way that makes them comfortable and enticing enough to spend hours at a time on the road. At some point, Americans and our court system need to act like adults

and recognize that every technological advancement offers costs and benefits. Regarding social media and children, tech companies have provided endless tools for parents to control their kids' usage. Our entire system of government is based on the idea that individuals and families are responsible for their own behavior. So it's unclear why the latest media trends should cause us to abandon that sound principle. In Fox News, Jonathan Turley argued social media addiction will easily outlast Mehta's settlement. 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 the parents regarding access to and use of social media, not the company. The line between a popular and an addictive product is fairly subjective, and it was hard to see where the line would have been drawn in this litigation. Social media remains one of the most transformative inventions in history, including as a powerful tool for free speech and political discourse.

That popularity comes at a price. Meta did not create these social costs alone, We all did. 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. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about meta's sensible social media settlement. This summer, the four attorney generals in the center of the suit suggested that damages could run as high as $1.4 trillion. though they later walked back their demand to some $200 billion.

That's still more than three times met as profit last year. Why did nearly all the states agree to settle for so much less? One reason may be that even if the Attorney Generals had prevailed at trial, their theories were vulnerable on appeal. Litigation would have dragged on for years. An advantage to settling is states will get money pronto with few constraints on how it can be spent. The settlement also includes platform changes

that go beyond what the AGs might have obtained by a court order. The ironic result is that teens in Florida and New Mexico won't benefit from meta's platform changes. Meta's settlement won't cure teens as mental ailments, but it will do more good than years of further litigation. All right, that's it for what the left and right are saying, so I'm going to pass it over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.

Finally, some good news. For years, META has been willing to go to the mat in defending its platform, rarely settling or admitting any wrongdoing. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been willing to answer tough questions before Congress, and he's postured as someone confident that the bad things people have said about his company are wrong. At the same time, he's cozyed up to the White House in a manner that suggests he thought he'd earned his enterprise some political and perhaps legal cover. Mehta has rabidly defend itself, both in actual court and in the court of public opinion. It's fought lawsuits at the state level for years, and while it has lost some, it is not backed down.

Meanwhile, any changes to Facebook or Instagram inspired by those challenges have been marginal. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines have not moved meta to implement the overhauls it may implement now, and use of its platform has continued to grow all the while, despite public outcry about what screen time, and social media addiction are doing to our society, especially young people. Damaging news articles showing that meta employees understood the harm the company's apps have caused barely made a blip on either its stock price or its growth. The $18 billion settlement is the top line number generating most of the headlines, and understandably so.

That's nearly one third of the social media giant's entire profit from 2025. It is an incredible sum, and one of the largest state. consumer protection settlements in United States history. But it's hardly the most important consequence of this agreement. What really matters are the platform changes, which seem designed to actually address the problem. I'd call them earnest, even if meta was dragged into this kicking and screaming. They constitute some of the most significant product restrictions the company has ever rolled out. A two-hour daily combined time limit for teens, a block on the app late at night, and muted notifications during school hours are all meaningful. Facebook and Instagram thrive on engagement,

time on screen, scrolling, dopamine hits. Without it, the market value of their product plummets. Meta is resolving this lawsuit by doing something that is likely to hurt its bottom line. Before writing today's piece, I spoke to a former meta software engineer who worked on developing some of the company's safety tools. He said these features are genuinely good at predicting age signals that can identify under 18 users, but that teens are so smart and adept at avoiding restrictions. For instance, he noted some kids would change the time zones on their phones to get around quiet hours.

He added that Meta face the possibility of these apps being all-out ban for under 18 users and that these restrictions will only apply to U.S.-based users. So for meta, it could have been much worse. Still, even holding the view that all people, not just teens, should generally avoid apps like Instagram, he described the two-hour time limit as huge and said he'd been shocked at how many hours teen users spent on apps like Instagram. Despite the possibility that teens will just go to other apps,

he felt this ruling was a major step forward. Despite the possibility that teens will just go to other apps, he felt this settlement was a major step forward, which, of course, partially complicates calling this a victory against screen time. At this point, few people would argue, that less screen time is a bad thing, but the reality is that neither Facebook nor Instagram is the most popular social media app among teens.

A much larger percentage of teenagers use YouTube and TikTok, and about as many use Snapchat. And once they're there, teens also tend to spend longer amounts of time on those platforms. This might be why, as part of its settlement, Meta has tried to blunt the force of the competitive disadvantage.

I can't recall ever seeing a settlement structure like this before. 30% or $5.3 billion of the roughly $18 billion meta is pledging is contingent on YouTube and TikTok, two companies which were not named in this suit, implementing their own time limits and nighttime use restrictions for teens. Both companies would also have to match the $5.3 billion settlement. After announcing the settlement, Meta took out full-page ads in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, urging their competitors to follow its lead. Will this peer pressure work? I'm skeptical, but I appreciate the effort. Maybe this is meta's way of ensuring it won't ever have to pay out the full cost of the fine. Maybe the platform

executives genuinely want to rein in screen time use for teenagers given everything we've learned over the last decade. Most likely, of course, the company recognizes that if YouTube and TikTok are available when meta isn't, teens will just use those platforms instead and leave meta in the dust. In other words, the structure of the settlement is Zuckerberg's insurance policy. Whatever happens next, META did this to itself. They're settling because they face damning evidence of willful negligence. A former top meta safety engineer testified that he had warned executives about its algorithms showing graphic violence and content from sexual predators to teens,

and those executives turned a blind eye. Numerous news reports, internal leaks, and previous court cases have established that Meta knew their product was harming kids, especially young girls who were developing eating disorders and opted to leave them as is. We aren't just learning about this in public either. We've known about it for five years. Perhaps most importantly, Meta is facing accountability within the legal limits of Section 230, a rule that shields tech companies from liability for content published by users on their platforms. A lot of people have long argued that Section 230 was an impediment to accountability. I've said the opposite, that it is an important guardrail that protects an open and free internet,

and that attacking it is a short-sighted way to go after these platforms. Many of the previous legal attacks on social media companies either disregarded or aimed to dismantle it. This one, though, circumvented it. Rather than argue that users were causing harm on their platforms and meta was doing nothing, the states argued that meta's platform features themselves were harmful, and that it had information about those harms, and that it misled the public and legislators about them. This line of legal attack was appropriate and apparently effective.

Not only did it just result in a massive settlement, but it put other platforms on notice without destroying a core concept of the free and open Internet, which is separating accountability for platforms from the accountability for what users do on those platforms. Plus, plus, plus. I find the full scope of this picture actually encouraging in almost every way. While the details of the case are hard to read, given the damage that's been done, the upside now is real. Big changes are coming to meta. Meaningful sums of money are being paid out.

Increased pressure is coming for other platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Awareness about the harms of scream time for kids is spreading. And we're not sacrificing a bedrock principle of the internet to make these gains. The tech backlash is here, and I, for one, am ready to embrace it. All right, that is it for my take. We have a joint staff dissent today from editors Audrey Moorhead and Karina Pacheco, so I'm going to turn it over to them. Thanks, Isaac.

This is editor Audrey Moorhead with a staff dissent on behalf of myself and associate editor Karina Pacheco. We don't share Isaac's overly optimistic perspective on the settlement for several reasons. First, we worry that the financial penalty on META, roughly $17 billion, is just a drop in the bucket relative to the company's 1.4, trillion-dollar market capitalization. We also aren't sold on the efficacy of META's new limitations. Early studies of age verification requirements imposed in Australia show that they're easily circumvented. Furthermore, the effect of META's changes will be limited if the same measures aren't taken by YouTube and

TikTok. And even if the big three companies align on platform restrictions, many teens will still find a way to get their social media fix elsewhere. Instead, the 1998 Big Tobacco settlement may be a model for more effective consequences. State attorneys general secured over $200 billion from the four largest tobacco companies, imposed heavy restrictions on advertising, and forced the companies to raise the prices on their products. Trying to prevent young people from forming a social media habit

in the first place, just as we did with smoking, might be far more effective in reducing its harms to teens and adults. Yes, social media giants are to blame for designing algorithms intended to distract, numb, and addict users. But we're wary of the efficacy of any company, state, or federal policy to impact screen time use. And talk about imposing government consequences on social media companies just obscures the real problem, that we must accept more personal accountability. The only viable solution to the social media crisis is to stop using these platforms at their current scale.

That leaves the major burden on the individual. Adults must evaluate as honestly as possible what a reasonable relationship with screens looks like for their children and for themselves. That's it for our dissent, so I'll pass things back to Isaac for the reader question. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, thank you, Audrey and Karina, for the dissent,

which brings us to today's Your Questions Answer. This one's from Christine in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Christine said, why is the turmoil about flock cameras so different from the situation of the ubiquitous cameras in Great Britain? All right, so as we wrote about last week and also we covered in our most recent YouTube video, by the way, which you can find at Tangle News on YouTube,

flock safety operates the largest network of automated license plate readers or ALPRs in the United States with approximately 127,000 cameras across the country accessible to a network of law enforcement agencies. The situation in the United Kingdom is different. An estimated 4 to 6 million closed circuit television cameras are operating in the UK, or roughly 700 cameras per 10,000 people.

This figure contributes, to the popular understanding that the UK has an anomalously vast surveillance state, or that it could even be the most surveilled country in the world. But its per capita figures put the country at fifth behind Pakistan, India, the United States, and China in that order. Really, the United Kingdom doesn't have a unique CCTV presence, and neither does England. London does.

Just shy of one million CCTV cameras operate in London, making it the most surveilled city in the world outside of China. A major differentiator between London's cameras and those in Chinese cities, however, is that they are private and decentralized. The vast majority of CCTV cameras are owned and operated by private businesses that do not share their data or provide a searchable database to police by default, although police can request footage from private cameras to assist in investigating a crime. This is similar to how private companies operate in the U.S., but it's different from flock cameras, which operate as part of a searchable nationwide network. About 600 of London's cameras are managed by various government entities, and the rules governing their data are quite different.

These automatic number plate recognition or ANPR cameras exist not just in London but throughout the country, and as their name suggests, they are similar to FLACs ALPRs. The United Kingdom's ANPRs record vehicle information and save their data to the national ANPR database, where it is saved for up to 12 months and accessible to police with few restrictions. In essence, then, the difference between the U.K.'s cameras and flock cameras in the U.S. is a matter of size and scope.

In the United Kingdom, London is home to a lot of private cameras, while a small but powerful network of government-operated cameras stores data in a database law enforcement can access relatively freely and for an extended period. In the United States, flock cameras operate broadly across the country and preserve their data for seven to 30 days, depending on the jurisdiction. To learn more about flock cameras, you can check out our latest YouTube video by looking uptangle News on YouTube.com. All right, back to Will. All right, jumping back in here to take us home with today's Have a Nice Day story.

Gelato, the kitten, suffered a spinal injury, and his legs couldn't support his weight. Fortunately for him, he arrived at the right place, Cincinnati Animal Care. The shelter staff named him and no. noticed that he was motivated to stand up in play, but none of their existing mobility devices were small enough for Gelato. So the shelter staff got creative, using everyday items to build him a mobility device. They used wooden rulers, zip ties, tape, and, most crucially, two hot wheels cars. According to veterinary assistant lead Mallory Smith, Gillado has gained strength in his legs

and has even begun to bear his own weight, all thanks to his new custom set of wheels. Local News 12 has the story, and we'll drop the link to it in today's show notes. Definitely recommend checking out the pictures in that one. All right, that is it for our edition. We will be back tomorrow with a special Friday edition. Looking forward to talking to you more then. Until then, have a great day, and... Peace!

Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kobach and associate editors Audrey Moorhead and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.