Meta agreed last week to an settlement of up to $18 billion after dozens of US states accused the company of harming children with addictive products. According to Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University who studies technology’s societal impact, Meta’s board should use this moment to request Mark Zuckerberg’s resignation and restructure the company to prioritize safety over profit.
Donovan traces Meta’s problems to systemic issues rooted in the company’s design choices. She notes that the settlement stems from a legal battle launched by journalists and independent researchers in 2016, originally focused on how Meta’s platforms powered disinformation campaigns around Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. According to Donovan, Zuckerberg is “the one throughline in Meta’s history of billion-dollar blunders that have hurt real people.”
The settlement includes design restrictions for teen accounts: limiting daily use to two hours, blocking access from midnight to 6 a.m., disabling notifications during school hours, and requiring parental account linkage with stronger age verification. However, Donovan argues these measures do little to address how the platform’s algorithms recommend contentious material like drugs, sex, and gambling to young users.
Donovan draws parallels to tobacco regulation, where public health solutions included limiting where smoking was allowed, setting age restrictions, and requiring companies to fund public education campaigns. She contends that Meta, like tobacco companies historically, makes deliberate design choices to increase user engagement—choices she describes as algorithmically engineered to keep users on the app longer.
The settlement marks the latest in a series of costly legal battles for Meta. According to Donovan, the company has faced billions in fines for issues ranging from privacy failures to a 2018 security breach, as well as documented harms to young people’s mental health. Donovan also cites Meta’s documented amplification of hate speech against the Rohingya in Myanmar and its role in spreading medical misinformation and vaccine hesitancy.
Donovan references recent congressional hearings where Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety lead whose teenage daughter experienced harassment on Instagram, stated: “You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids.” She notes that whistleblowers have produced evidence showing Meta knew of the damage Instagram caused to teenage girls, referencing documents obtained from whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Despite these scandals, according to Forbes, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200 billion. Donovan argues that fines are meaningless to someone of his wealth, making leadership change essential. She calls on Meta shareholders to push back against Zuckerberg’s control and for the company to voluntarily restructure under new leadership.
Key facts
- Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement after US states accused it of harming children with addictive products
- The settlement requires teen accounts to be limited to two hours daily, blocked from midnight to 6 a.m., and linked to parental accounts
- A former Meta safety lead, Arturo Béjar, testified that the company’s algorithms recommend contentious content like drugs, sex, and gambling to young users
- Meta has faced multiple billion-dollar settlements for privacy failures, mental health harms to teens, and amplification of misinformation and hate speech
- According to Forbes, Zuckerberg’s net worth has reached nearly $200 billion despite ongoing legal battles