Less than 24 hours ago the grassroot organization “Wait Until 8th” (*) announced on Facebook “a landmark win for kids’ online safety”, saying, according from news from New York Times & NBC News:

Meta just reached a settlement with 47 states, D.C., and U.S. territories over claims it knowingly built addictive platforms for kids — agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and overhaul how teens use Instagram and Facebook.

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb called it “a monumental public health victory for young people” - and noted Meta won’t be the last platform to settle.

The deal still needs a judge’s sign-off, but the message is clear: the tide is turning on Big Tech’s grip on kids’ attention.

This is why Wait Until 8th exists: to give kids a childhood before the algorithm gets a vote. The wind is finally at our backs!

One of Wait Until 8th sources, the New York Times, described the deal as Meta agreeing to “make major changes to its products over claims its platforms endangered children”

Here is according to those and, when mentioned, other sources, what will actually change for teen accounts:

• 2-hour daily time limit across FB + Instagram (parent permission required to lift it)

• _No access midnight - _6am; notifications silenced 10pm - 7am

• Likes hidden by default

• “Extreme” beauty filters blocked

• Option for a non-algorithmic feed + autoplay off

• Stronger age verification + new parental controls

• [stronger] safeguards against bullying, eating-disorder content and material involving suicide and self-harm. (Azer News)

What REALLY happened

If what you just read is an accurate summary of the deal, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is clueless, and so is everybody else calling this a monumental victory for young people.

The most obvious reason is money: $17.1 billion may seem a lot of money, but it is just 4.6% of Meta’s net income from 2014 to mid 2026, that is part of all the years in which their business strategy harmed teens and adults alike. You can bet $17 billion that Meta stockholders, that is Zuckerberg and all his peons without voting power are really happy right now.

The real, most serious reasons why that deal is a landmark victory not for teens but for Meta are these:

First, the changes above are objectively beneficial, but just because they are they should be for everybody, not just teens. In 2026 nobody in good faith can deny that likes, beauty filters, non-stop notifications and everything else in that list have wrecked and keep wracking the brains of adults. Turning off those features only for teens is like forcing tobacco companies to (finally!) sell lighter cigarettes to children, while remaining able to sell whatever junk they want to adults, and believing that age controls will always prevent children from getting the latter.

Second, something that in and by itself has nothing to do with the trial, but since it part of what allowed social media to keep harming everybody, it had to be said anyway: in the deal there is no prohibition for public officials to use social media as their official, first if not exclusive communication channels with the people they serve. I explained this five years ago when Joe Biden was doing it, and yesterday I read a post from a mother rightly pissed off because her kid’s school sends communication to students..,,with SnapChat. This is really wrong and must end, because it is like certifying that cigarette hurt, and then demanding that everybody wishing to speak with the President or Principal must smoke one first.

Third, back to the scope of the trial, I see no mention of WhatsApp. So teens and preteens can continue to lose sleep, bully their peers, exchange inappropriate content and generally prepare themselves to remain cognitive slaves of Meta when they grow up, and Meta will have collected years of precious metadata about their life patterns and the graph of all their contacts.

Fourth, and most important now: the deal still has all the serious defects I listed one week ago, that is two requests that are dangerous for privacy and free speech, and above all no obligation for Meta to implement the two changes that would be enough to make this whole problem much, much, much smaller than lawmakers cluelessness allowed it to become, namely RSS and adversarial interoperability. To know what I’m talking about, so you can tell your representatives to start another trial tomorrow, read what I said the day this trial started

Fifth, just like WhatsApp, there is no mention of AI, which yes, was not the object of the trial, and just for this is important. Just one week before this “landmark case” started, Mark Zuckerberg was so concerned about having to pay for all the damage he’s done to children to issue (because that’s what absolute monarchs do, issue decrees) a “Path to a Positive AI Future” in which, among other things, everyone children included will have “a personalized tutor and coach”, courtesy of Meta and similar companies, which obviously will provide such total dependence on the AIs under their exclusive control for noble reasons, not their own profit.

The total lack of knowledge of human life of that babble has been already widely exposed, for example by The Verge. I mention it here because, if publication of that “Manifesto” mere days before a trial that should have turned Meta’s whole business model upside down isn’t a proof that social media are yesterday’s battle, I don’t know what is.

Tell your lawmakers to get a clue already

Summing up, this deal is a landmark victory for Meta because, in just one week, they came out with a promise that they can continue to train kids people for full subjection when they will be adults and keep all their services for adults (plus their AI ones, which will be the most powerful) as toxic as they are today, by paying little more than pocket change.

This trial, and the whole vision that led to it, are just another season of throwing the WRONG kitchen sink at Big Tech (2021)

Last but not least: what I am going to do about it

I started saying seven years ago that “breaking up Facebook” or trials like this are useless, and I am sick and tired of seeing no real change in this fight. At this point, I am sure that the first if not the only community that could and should solve this mess for good, with no need of huge funds and without asking anybody’s permission is parents.. if they only got the right information and perspective.

Never mind regulators, which with some measures (first in line, age verification) may do more harm than good in the long run. As long as Big Tech can convince parents to keep making the wrong questions (as it happened in this trial) the answers won’t matter. Especially now that AI is by far the first thing to rein in, not social media.

I have been closely following this field for more than ten years now and, as you can see from this archive I am already writing all I can to help parents make the right questions, and donations to write more are always welcome. However, there is one thing I could do that for many parents may be more helpful and it’s cheaper and less time-consuming than going to the movies, so here it is:

Starting next week, I am available for one-hour video-meetings with current or future parents to discuss everything, not just social media, about parenting in a digital age, and present what may be a widely accessible solution the root causes of certain problems.

Each meeting will be for up 10 participants, price 5 Euros per person. I will describe better how I imagine these meetings in the next post, but you can already send suggestions, ask for more details and schedule meetings, sending an email at mfioretti@nexaima.net.

(*) DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a critique to Wait Until 8th, which is doing something very important and should get much more participants! Really!