How Facebook and Instagram will change after Meta's $18B settlement - and where the money is going

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Meta has settled a lawsuit surrounding teen social media use.
• The settlement brings big changes and an $18 billion penalty.
• That money will go to child online safety programs.

Meta has announced that it agreed to a settlement in a landmark child safety lawsuit, and sweeping changes are coming to Facebook and Instagram as a result -- plus $18 billion in funding for online safety initiatives, youth mental health, and other programs.

The lawsuit, which alleges the tech company purposefully designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to minors, misled the public about how safe the platforms were, and illegally harvested private data from teen users, was brought by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from nearly every US state.

This suit was filed in 2023.

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