New norms for teens on social media?
The federal trial over Meta’s harmful effects on children is no more. This morning, hours before Instagram boss Adam Mosseri was set to resume testimony, the company and a coalition of state attorneys general announced an out-of-court settlement.
The price tag is in all the headlines: About $18 billion. But the bigger impacts may be in the “consent judgment” that Meta has accepted — and what it might mean for the rest of the tech industry.
Meta “has agreed to make changes to its platforms, such as establishing daily time limits for teen users,” CNN’s Clare Duffy reports here.
There will supposedly be “nighttime blocks” restricting overnight access, “productive pauses” to curb mindless scrolling and “robust age assurance measures.”
But won’t teens just jump over to TikTok or YouTube or Snap instead? Well, on a briefing call with reporters just now, Meta’s legal team said the deal is designed to incentivize the rest of the industry to put similar measures in place.
“To be truly effective, we need TikTok and YouTube to join us,” Meta wrote in an open e-letter this morning.
As the NYT’s Cecilia Kang and Eli Tan noted here, today’s agreement may play into “other legal claims against Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap,” with thousands of suits still pending.
Stakeholders are still digesting this morning’s settlement. It’s impossible to immediately say just how meaningful these changes will be. After all, these apps are sprawling, constantly evolving and stupefyingly popular.
But some of the deal terms are certainly intriguing, like the “ban on displaying numbers of likes or reactions to users under 18” and the option for teens “to have a non-personalized feed, meaning a feed that doesn’t use an algorithm to target them with content aimed to keep them endlessly scrolling.” (That language is from California AG Rob Bonta’s press release.)
“This is the largest settlement reached with a single company in the history of the Office of the Attorney General,” New York AG Letitia James’ office said in a statement. “The funds are intended to support mental health services, education programs, and other efforts to repair and reduce the harm caused by unhealthy social media use among young people.”
Meta’s sheer size makes it hard to process the significance of the $18 billion figure. “The Meta settlement money figure is a rounding error compared to Meta’s annual capex on AI — especially when it’s amortized over the next ten years,” NYT tech reporter Mike Isaac tweeted just now. “But these required product changes could actually [be] significant if they are enforced, not easily bypassed by kids.”
Duffy points out in her story that “while $18 billion amounts to only a fraction of the revenue that Meta earns each quarter, the changes it’s agreed to could significantly impact its ad-based business model if they reduce the time teens spend on its apps.”
The sweeping deal also resolves lawsuits by several states “over privacy claims related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the consulting firm collected personal data of millions of Facebook users. Those states will receive $459.3 million to resolve those lawsuits,” Diana Novak Jones reports for Reuters.
“Of course I used AI.” That’s what Duquesne Capital founder Stanley Druckenmiller told NOTUS’ Jeff Stein amid an online uproar over his Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Let the Bond Market Speak.”
“There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” Druckenmiller said. “I’m not embarrassed by it… I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”
More interestingly, The Journal’s opinion editor, Paul Gigot, defended it, saying “AI is a fact of modern life” and “nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.” Semafor’s Max Tani called it a “precedent-setting moment in news media” because one of the country’s top editors is OKing “the use of AI for drafting pieces, no disclosure necessary.”
>> Right now “there is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era,” Bill Gates warns in a new open letter. Gates has taped an interview with Anderson Cooper that will air tonight. (Gates Notes)
>> OpenAI “has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Russia that it said were being used to support a covert online influence campaign to spread misinformation.” (CNBC)
>> The latest example of media companies making AI bets: Universal, Warner Music, Sony Music and Electronic Arts are all part of Stability AI’s new Series B funding round. (Variety)
>> Billboard says it will be “identifying songs on its charts and in its editorial coverage that use AI.” (Billboard)
CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister said it best: “It just felt like Dolly Parton would be with all of us forever.”
The announcement of Parton’s death caused audible shock yesterday. Fox’s Gillian Turner wrote, “We have people in our newsroom as young as 23 and older than 70. There was a collective gasp of dismay so loud as the Dolly news broke on the wire that my office mate flung open our door in alarm. How many people touch the lives of Americans across 6 generations?”
The cable news networks devoted hours of live coverage to Parton’s life and legacy. CBS and ABC aired 10 p.m. special reports. NBC has one scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight. TIME is out with a commemorative special edition. CNN’s Sara Sidner anchored from outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville this morning.
>> A common theme among Parton obituaries: She transcended politics in a way we might never see again. She “was perhaps the only person in the United States who commanded nearly universal affection,” The Atlantic’s David A. Graham wrote.
We’ve now reached the leaks-about-leaks stage of the Paramount–WBD lawsuit.
Take Charlie Gasparino, who’s been channeling the pro-Paramount, anti-Rob Bonta POV in his tweets and columns for months. Yesterday he tweeted some info attributed to anonymous Paramount executives. Then he deleted and reposted it with a different attribution: “People who say they know Paramount’s game plan.”
“The game plan now is to let Bonta take minor wins but basically craft a settlement that keeps the structure of the deal, I am told,” he wrote.
We’ll see if that works. Gasparino also asserted that Paramount has imposed an “information lockdown,” with details about any future settlement talks with Bonta limited to just David Ellison and Makan Delrahim. So, you could call this a leak about not leaking.
Bonta said on the record yesterday that those talks have not been rescheduled yet. Paramount said in a statement to Bloomberg that it is ready to talk about “structural remedies.” So there will likely be some discussions soon.
After Pennsylvania reported two deaths related to the measles outbreak, “the first US deaths related to measles reported in 2026,” Gov. Josh Shapiro ripped into what he called “conspiracy theories and misinformation” that hurts public health, and said he had confronted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the matter.
“There’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation,” Shapiro said. “There’s real-life consequences to scaring people.” Kennedy responded on X by accusing the governor of “gaslighting.”
This is a crucial ruling for the local TV stations that benefit from campaign ad spending:
“A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that political parties — recently allowed by the Supreme Court to spend unlimited amounts in consultation with campaigns — aren’t entitled to the significantly lower candidate advertising rate when they do so,” Politico’s Andrew Howard and Jessica Piper report.
Basically, only candidates get a discounted rate for TV spots, while parties and committees and outside groups have to pay full price.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals kept that standard in place, siding “with four Democratic candidates over the FCC and Republicans’ campaign arms.”
Before the decision was announced, the FCC’s lone Democrat Anna Gomez spoke out against Brendan Carr’s effort to give parties the discount, arguing it hurts the TV stations that Carr claims to want to help: “You cannot claim broadcasters are struggling to survive and then force them into a fire sale on the one thing that could actually help them compete and increase revenue.”
If the decision stands, Howard and Piper wrote, it would “significantly erode the advantage Republicans believe they got from the Supreme Court ruling — affecting how tens of millions of dollars are spent in this year’s midterm election.” Appeals are a certainty…
Yes, yes it is: “Trump administration threatens to demolish Kennedy Center if renovations aren’t allowed.”
The building “may need to be demolished and replaced with an open-air performance space if its current building cannot undergo extensive renovations, lawyers for the venue said in court papers,” CNN’s Devan Cole and Sunlen Serfaty reported here.
The hard-to-believe claim was “mentioned alongside arguments defending the board’s decision to vote, once again, to add Trump’s name to the front of the center’s facade.” A judge is set to hold a hearing tomorrow over a Democratic lawmaker’s bid to keep Trump’s name off the building…
Forbes and Shook Research said yesterday that they’ll “suspend the rankings and events they produced together as they dealt with the widening fallout from a $6 million payment from the firm’s founder to the publication’s top editor,” the NYT’s Ben Mullin reports.
Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips wrote in a memo that the suspension would last through the end of the year. Mullin writes that the disclosure had “spooked some prominent financial firms” from participating in the lists. “We remain confident in the integrity of the rankings, but we recognize that there is a need to restore trust with the adviser community, partners and audiences,” Phillips wrote…
>> Awards columnist Kyle Buchanan is leaving the NYT and “launching a new video podcast about Hollywood, ‘The Kyle Buchanan Show,’ in mid-October,” Marc Malkin reports. (Variety)
>> “Longtime Warner Bros. animation boss Sam Register is departing the company next week as his contract expires,” Michael Schneider reports. (Variety)
>> “A bearded Stephen Colbert has emerged to give fellow Donald Trump enemy Jimmy Kimmel an Emmy boost, even though his own canceled show is among the nominees.” (Beast)
>> I appreciated Colbert’s reminder to vote! Fellow Television Academy members, the Emmy voting deadline is tonight at 10 p.m. Pacific.
“In another record of Marvel beating Marvel, Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has beaten ‘Avengers: Endgame’ to become the second highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office with $858.4 million,” Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro reports. “This weekend, ‘Brand New Day’ should continue to be No. 1 at the domestic box office with $18 million in its fifth sesh,” D’Alessandro writes.
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.