South Dakota Receives Over Fifty Million Dollars From Meta Settlement

South Dakota is getting a massive payout as part of a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against a social media giant.

According to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, the state will receive at least $52,612,676 as its share of a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. South Dakota’s share could grow to $73,480,057 if certain conditions are met. The state will receive its share over the next 10 years.

The settlement is contingent on the approval of the agreement by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which is hearing a lawsuit filed against Meta by South Dakota and 28 other states.

The lawsuit was filed against Meta for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. A nationwide investigation uncovered Instagram features that addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents.

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In addition, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook:

● 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 AM to 6:00 PM

● Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year

● Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users

● Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm

● Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls

● Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens

● 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.

It is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.

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