Meta’s landmark settlement with dozens of State Attorneys General over social media harms does not address the company’s pernicious surveillance business model that harms all internet users. Young people should have safe online spaces to flourish, but this settlement does not create them. 

Instead, the settlement includes numerous efforts to burden teens’ access to its platforms and incentivizes industry-wide adoption of surveillance measures across platforms like TikTok, Snap and YouTube.  The settlement does not touch Meta’s information extractive profit making and allows Meta to write the rules of the road for kids’ online safety.