Ben Whitelaw 0:00

Mike, I don't know How often you cook,

Mike Masnick 0:02

Oh.

Ben Whitelaw 0:04

But you will have known by now that following a recipe on your phone is an absolute nightmare. I've got so bored of like, constant scroll and the skipping between videos and, like, those kind of SEO bait recipes that have become a bane of all of our lives. Well, I found a solution, and it's very, very cool. It's this thing called Recipe Tables that rather than showing a recipe as a story, has come up with, with what it calls a, prep table. And so recipes are now shown visually as a table with the ingredients down one side and the techniques that you need to use to make your meal on the right-hand side. So you can see at a glance what you need to do and when. You don't have to go back and

Mike Masnick 0:47

No scrolling.

Ben Whitelaw 0:48

it's no scrolling. It's fantastic. Um, and this tool allows you to paste any URL into its tool, and it kind of displays your recipe, exactly in this kind of special prep table form. So it's wicked. It's really cool.

Mike Masnick 1:01

Very nice. It's very old-fashioned though, because the kids these days are using AI to help them. Just ask the AI to tell them what other ingredients they need for their recipe.

Ben Whitelaw 1:10

True. Yeah, true. What have I, what steps have I missed?

Mike Masnick 1:13

Yes

Ben Whitelaw 1:14

what have you been looking at this week?

Mike Masnick 1:16

Uh, so the, the really cool thing that I saw on the internet that reminded me of how cool the internet can be... do you know who Rainbolt is? There's a YouTuber named Rainbolt. Have you ever heard of him? So his sort of claim to fame is that he is very, very good at the game GeoGuessr. Have you ever played GeoGuessr? Yes. So very fun, whatever. So Rainbolt is sort of a, a YouTube influencer who is very good, though my children tell me he is not the best at GeoGuessr. He is merely a good YouTuber at GeoGuessr. but occasionally, you know, he'll, he'll do other kinds of videos, but most of them around his sort of skills at finding stuff. So he put up this video that I warn you ahead of time may make you cry, because someone had reached out to him. 'Cause, like, people will ask him, "Can you find where this was?" They'll like... I've seen him find, like, photos of, like, great-grandparents on their honeymoon in some random place, and he'll figure out where it was, you know, 120 years ago or whatever. But this one was, someone said that when they were a kid, they were, like, seven or eight years old or something, and their father had taken them to a Lakers game, basketball, back to

Ben Whitelaw 2:30

Ja.

Mike Masnick 2:31

and that the father had unexpectedly passed away soon afterwards. And they, they had a photo from the game, but the kid did not know which game it was and was trying to find which game it was. So he gave him the photo and he said, "I promised I would find it." And then he systematically goes through how he used the internet and, like, Getty Images and, news stories, and all of these other, like, little things, and eventually, I'm not gonna, away exactly how he finds it, but at one point he's like, The real secret to all of this were these two blue pixels." And you're just like, oh my God. And he figures out which game it is. Then he finds online the video of the game, watches the entire video of the game until he spots them, the kid and his father, in the audience, and it's just like, it's, it's really, very, very moving, both incredible about the internet and what can be found on the internet and how it can do it, and then just a very, very moving, ending for that. And if you look also, I will say, read the first comment on that video after you've watched the video as well. So

Ben Whitelaw 3:37

Okay. Little Easter egg that you've left us there. I mean, that s- that sounds fantastic. It's, it's the perfect tonic it sounds like to this, today's episode, where we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about, nothing so wholesome

Mike Masnick 3:51

Yes.

Ben Whitelaw 3:52

unfortunately. Hello, and welcome to Ctrl Alt Speech, the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation, and the future of the internet. It's August 27th, 2026, and this week we're going all in on the big story of the week, Meta's blockbuster online safety settlement, what it entails, what they've agreed, and for our extended Patreon episode, why it matters and what happens next. Ctrl Alt Speech is the podcast that, unlike Meta, settles almost nothing, l- leaves almost everything open, and it's co-hosted by Mike Masnick, founder and editor of Techdirt, and me, Ben Whitelaw, founder and editor of Everything in Moderation. Mike, this podcast doesn't cost 17 billion pounds. Uh,

Mike Masnick 4:42

Not yet. Give us time, Ben. Let us cook.

Ben Whitelaw 4:47

it's, it's a slow and, gradual growth. but yeah, this, this has been the massive story of the week, right? It's, it's... I like it when there are stories that, we care about that get covered in the mainstream news, and which kind of people will, almost stop you in the street to talk about, right? This, this has been one of those.

Mike Masnick 5:01

Yeah. Though, it, I mean, it's, it's crazy because it came out yesterday and, all week long between last week's episode, which was a very good episode you missed, but was still a very good episode. and there were a bunch of stories, and I was filling up our, spreadsheet with all the different stories we wanted to cover, and then yesterday they all got wiped out

Ben Whitelaw 5:20

Yeah.

Mike Masnick 5:21

'cause we've got a story to cover today.

Ben Whitelaw 5:24

Yeah. It was a giant meteor of a story that landed on the Ctrl Alt-Speech Earth. we can't really not talk about anything else, and there's so much to it that w- we, couldn't really, even cover it in just a free episode. I think we're gonna have to split it out, really break it down, talk through what it looks like. we'll get into it basically. before we do, you know, the people who haven't settled are our Patreon supporters, Mike. They, they are, investing in, in a way that is almost akin to meta

Mike Masnick 5:49

can we get attorneys general to force people to pay us? Is that, is that where we're getting at?

Ben Whitelaw 5:54

I think this is a good, this, settlement suggests we might have a case.

Mike Masnick 5:58

There we go.

Ben Whitelaw 5:59

Yeah. Um, but we've got, uh, we've got lots of Patreon supporters. We've got our free supporters, who we love. They're dipping their toe into the waters of Ctrl Alt-Speech. they're not paying anything right now, but they're getting a sense of what we provide. We've got our supporter tier that are getting our extended episodes and earlier access for, much less than £18 billion, and that is $10 a month. And we've got our founder and insider tiers who are getting all that and the chance to suggest stories for $20 a month. And as of today, we are rolling out the chance for those supporters to give us ideas about what special episodes we should be doing for our Patreon supporters. So if you are an insider or a founder, supporter and you have something you want us to cover, a particular question you have, we are taking ideas for special episodes of Ctrl Alt-Speech. We've already done one, which is our s- our reading list episode, which we put out a couple of months

Mike Masnick 6:51

Which was really good, by the way. If, if you haven't listened to it, it was, you know, we each went through three different books that we think are really incredibly valuable if you're interested in the kinds of topics that we talk about. and we got some really good feedback on this as well. We may end up doing another episode with more books because as we noted, there are a lot of very interesting books in the space, but that was a really, really fun episode

Ben Whitelaw 7:15

Definitely. I've been questioning whether I included the right three books in that ep- episode, so we will have to do another one. but yeah, our Patreon supporters are a massive part of how we produce and sustain Ctrl Alt Speech. we also, have some brilliant sponsors who come on board to sponsor and, and reach our excellent audience. So if you're interested in becoming a supporter, go to patreon.com/ctrlaltspeech, more information there. And if you want to sponsor us, go to the Ctrl Alt Speech website and you can find out more information and some examples of, sponsorships that we've done in the past. as we get to the end of August, Mike, as, as August comes to a close, it's important to mention that our Trust Con code is still valid for

Mike Masnick 7:56

Our discount code, yes

Ben Whitelaw 7:57

Our discount code, If you're interested in, doing more than dipping your toe into the waters of Ctrl Alt Speech and you want 90% off your first month, use Trust Con. we're there at the end of August doing our live episode, and this is a special promotion we're running. that's still available until the end of this month, so ending on Tuesday.

Mike Masnick 8:15

Yes

Ben Whitelaw 8:16

Perfect. Glad, glad we're agreed on that.

Mike Masnick 8:20

No. How dare you? Uh, yeah but, uh, I mean, we put our all into this podcast, and, we hope that that comes through in what you hear. and if you wanna see it keep going and continue to support the work that we're doing in trying to explain these complex topics and make them understandable and make them real, please look into supporting us on, Patreon, and thank you already to those who have already stepped up and support us there. go subscribe, and you can do it at a discounted rate if you use the code TrustCon for the next few days

Ben Whitelaw 8:52

Indeed. And if, if you, want to become a paid supporter right now, you can obviously help us out by rating and reviewing us wherever you get your podcasts. That is free. all it needs is your time and your, creativity, let's say

Mike Masnick 9:05

And also, you can promote the podcast to other people. You can tell other people about the podcast or about the stories that you liked or that you, we said something that you found interesting or compelling or that changed your mind on something. Tell other people about it. Word of mouth is how podcasts grow. So we always say rate, review, and subscribe. That is the sort of official ways, but I think we should be more aggressive in reminding people to tell other people. People you know may be interested in what we're saying, and the way they're gonna find out about it is if you tell them

Ben Whitelaw 9:35

Yeah. Ping that Discord group or that Slack channel or, you know, those friends that you don't really like but think they should have better views on the internet. you're the smart person who knows about the internet. Do your thing and, uh, share the good word of Ctrl Alt Speech. Um, Mike, we really have a lot to get into in so far as this Meta settlement goes. This is, a case that's been rumbling since 2023. It might have caught a lot of people off guard if they've not been paying attention. and so you've written about it extensively this week on Techdirt. I've seen a lot of people sharing your post, as a, counterpoint to a lot of the reporting out there. But just before we dive into some of those ideas, talk us through what the actual settlement entails, and some of the kind of things that have been agreed off the back of it.

Mike Masnick 10:20

Yeah. So this, this was a case that was bo- brought by most state attorneys general in the US, not all, most of them, against Meta a few years ago, you know, claiming all of the usual things about child safety and, and, you know, the argument being that Meta does not take child safety seriously enough and something needs to be done. And the case has been moving forward in sort of fits and starts, over the last few years. And, there's the trial that's going on in California right now that was sort of related to that. there's obviously also the New Mexico case that we covered, a few months ago when, when all of that happened and, and the rulings there. but what happened yesterday as we're recording was that Meta settled with 52 attorneys general, and basically wiped out most of those cases. you know, it was a consolidated case. But, wiped out that, made an agreement they were gonna pay a bunch of money, that the amount that they pay depends on a few different factors, which we'll get into in a, a moment, they have promised to put in place a bunch of different changes within the app, which are designated to hopefully protect and help protect children in some form or another. and they are also going to try to make this into an industry standard. The features and changes that they're making, or at least some of the features and changes that they're making, they are trying to impress upon specifically YouTube and TikTok to make the same changes, and there are some incentive structures involved here to get them to try and make it an industry standard. And if other social media companies reach to a certain level, then Meta is also effectively required to try to pressure them into implementing the same features as well. so that's the sort of headline. You know, the headline number that gets a lot of attention is that they're paying, it depends on which reporting you see. It's somewhere between $16 and $18 billion. and that money will go to the states. In theory, that money is supposed to be used for child safety related things. it will be paid out over the course of about 10 years. you know, so a lot of people, the initial response is Meta is a very large company that makes a lot of money. $18 billion over 10 years is not that much

Ben Whitelaw 12:44

and actually to put that into context, revenue last year from Meta's various businesses and apps was 200 billion. So we're talking about, less than a 10th of last year's revenue

Mike Masnick 12:54

Spread out over 10 years

Ben Whitelaw 12:55

spread, spread out over 10 years, which we, which we talk about. they had a particularly good last quarter, I think something like 24 or 25% up year on year. So they made 60 billion just in the last quarter alone. So it's essentially one third of last quarter's revenue. So we're talking about a month's worth of Meta revenue at the current trajectory. That's a really important thing to note. So in salary terms, you know, I was thinking about it in terms of like my, my salary take home. It's a bit like having to replace your boiler,

Mike Masnick 13:27

Yes.

Ben Whitelaw 13:28

right? You know, for, for your

Mike Masnick 13:29

that's a...

Ben Whitelaw 13:30

your average person, you know, again, you know, not, not giving away too much about how much I earn here, I don't think. But like boiler, bo- boilers vary in, in, in cost. But for the average person, it's probably the cost of, an unexpected boiler replacement

Mike Masnick 13:44

Right. you know, I, I think I, I sort of said, it probably stings, but you, it's the kind of sting that you forget about a day later, it is not nothing, but it is something that, effectively will be forgotten by the company very soon

Ben Whitelaw 13:59

Yeah. And in terms of the usefulness, I mean, boilers are useful. We'll talk about how useful this settlement will be for Meta going forward. But I think it's important to kind of contextualize that number. Talk about the 10 years, Mike, 'cause I had to do a bit of, uh, I'm not familiar with a lot of, like, US legal settlements. The 10 years kind of matters for a few reasons, right? the reason it's spread out, as far as I'm understanding, is that they don't they can't just pay it and forget about it. Is that part of it?

Mike Masnick 14:24

I mean, there's a bunch of moving parts within the settlement. and it's not entirely uncommon that you would have this kind of settlement. you know, where, where things are paid out over time, where things need to be checked over time. There's like, there's a process in which an independent auditor has to get in-involved to make sure that Meta is taking care of these things. There are other structures that are being set up as a part of this as well, which is what some of the, the money will get paid into. but was there something specific about the 10-year structure that, struck you as

Ben Whitelaw 14:53

Well, just as a kind of fairly arbitrary number, um, right? You know, it's kind of, I was thinking like why 10 years? Why not, five? Or why not kind of fewer than, than that? But, is it fairly common that these kind of settlements would be over a

Mike Masnick 15:05

Yeah, this, doesn't strike me-- I mean, you know, this is obviously unique in certain ways, but it's not uncommon for... You know, the thing that I would compare the ten-year structure to is the various FTC, consent decrees that basically all of the social media companies ha-have had whenever they've done something bad on the privacy front. At some point, they come to a settlement decree with, with the FTC, and those usually stretch over a period of time, which will be ten to twenty years. And part of the thinking there is generally like, you know, we wanna make sure that you are continuing to do the things that you are required to do over this time, so we're going to be checking back in, and we're putting in place some rules on, on how you do it, which, you know, there is related to the payments over ten years, the, features that Meta has agreed to, make standard or default, those are required over a period of five to ten years as well. So it's, it's sort of stretching out this, this sense of like, know, Meta is committed to doing this and can't roll it back or change things very quickly, after the settlement has been agreed to. I don't know that the, payment necessarily directly matters on that front. I do think that, you know, it also in some sense keeps Meta engaged, that they don't forget about this. Like, it, it almost acts as a reminder. on the flip side too, it's like if you're the states and you're getting this settlement, whereas it may be a sort of a drop in the bucket for Meta, it's still a significant amount of money that is suddenly gonna go into the state coffers. And if it was all a one-time payment, you know, there may be some benefits to doing it that way, but it's also the kind of thing that easily could then get squandered. Whereas if you know that you have a ten-year period where you're gonna get, uh, hundred million dollars a year or whatever, you can sort of plan for that and put that to good use with a sort of expectation of, what's gonna happen over the next ten years. and so I think the hope is that if you do it that way, the money will actually put to good use. you know, we'll see how the states eventually actually use it or how much transparency it-- there is into how the states use it right now. I don't know that there is that much transparency. I mean, I think that would be really interesting. Are the states actually going to put this into child safety in any meaningful way, and what does that mean? What does that look like? Are the states in agreement of how they're gonna use the money? That's information that as far as I know, haven't been told yet, and I don't know if we'll ever be told.

Ben Whitelaw 17:26

Right. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. so that covers off the amount and the kind of time span that this settlement is over. Talk us through the kind of what Meta has agreed to, um, as part of this then, because, yeah, I, I read in your tech, uh, post that you felt it, to some degree that what they've agreed to in terms of product changes actually doesn't really matter, but it's still what's being reported fairly heavily.

Mike Masnick 17:49

Yeah. I mean, it matters to users of Meta's b- uh, products, especially the teen users, because some of the changes are things that aren't really changes. A lot of them are things that Meta was kind of already doing or already embracing or already pushed into by other legal processes over, over the last few years. so there are a bunch of things, and they're all sort of features that, if you read them, you might say, like, "Oh, okay, these are things designed to, protect teenagers." the big one on, my side is the, age assurance, the guarantee of doing age assurance, which age assurance is the polite way of saying age verification, which is the polite way of saying identity verification. age assurance, they always sort of hand wave around it where it's like, "Oh, if we're doing age assurance, we don't necessarily need to get your ID." But generally these things lead back to you have to provide some sort of identifi- the service in some form or another.

Ben Whitelaw 18:45

I suppose there's a lot of, uh, margin for error in age assurance, which kind of looks at a biometric image or some other kind of signals, right?

Mike Masnick 18:55

Yeah. some of the issue is just, like, if you're having, like, hard cliffs within your age categorization system, if it's like 16 and under has to be treated this way, the general age assurance is not going to be that good in that the age assurance system might be able to tell the difference between a 12-year-old and a 60-year-old. Anyone can tell the difference between a 12-year-old and a 60-year-old. Where it gets very tricky is when you're trying to tell the difference between, like, a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old, and if that is important to the systems that you're putting in place, and that can matter because the types of things, experiences, and content that are appropriate for a 14-year-old could be very different than for a 17-year-old. and so if you're trying to judge down to that very granular level of, like, between 15 and 17, you generally will need some sort of identification to really prove who someone is, and then you're getting into the question of, like, privacy and the rights of teenagers. And as we discussed last week when you were away, France just threw out their, social media ban. the constitutional council there threw out the ban that, Macron put in place because they said, like, it is ignoring the fact that teenagers have rights, too, and they do. you know, and I've said in the past, like, when platforms are deciding to put in place age-appropriate systems on their own, that is perhaps more understandable. But when it's, at the behest of the state, then it begins to get tricky and begins to tiptoe into areas where it's like now the government is trampling on the rights specifically of teens. The other aspect of it is that when you're in the age verification, identity verification world, it's easy to say, "Well, you know, we have to protect the kids," but the only way that works is if you identify everybody, right? If you're gonna have to know who the kids are, who the teens are, you also have to know who the adults are, which means you're basically doing some sort of process to identify everyone, and then that becomes a sort of big privacy concern over how that is done and how you protect that data and how you keep people safe.

Ben Whitelaw 21:03

Yeah. And it, and it's worth noting that Meta has in recent months talked about how it is expanding its age assurance measures and using AI to, for example, place teens into its kind of what it calls teen-appropriate experiences. So it has been doing elements of this. this settlement kind of, I guess, makes that a blanket, thing. again, we don't think we know exactly what means they're using, but it's an experience that's gonna be coming to more, more users on Meta. so that is one aspect, but there are other aspects as well, right? There are lots of kind of little elements that have been given to people who, who are concerned about children's safety

Mike Masnick 21:41

a whole bunch of other little tweaks and changes. The one that I think has probably gotten the biggest headlines is the two-hour time limit. So this is across meta platforms. Teenagers will be limited to two hours of time per day, and then they'll be cut off. there are also regular prompts. If you're, like, looking at content for a while, it will remind you you've been looking at this for this much time, sort of leading up to the two hours. Now, there are a couple important things on that two hours. one of which, which I think is a really big deal, which is that parents can override that. and I think there are going to be many stories coming out of, you know, kids are going to be using it. They're gonna hit the two hours. They're gonna run to the parent and say, like, "Hey, you know, I was in the middle of something. I need to get a pass this." And a bunch of parents are going to end up removing that, and then it's not gonna matter, right? And so, like, you have all sorts of things. There's always issues of, like, when you need parental consent, that raises a whole other, series of concerns about relationships between children and their parents and who has authority and, and whether or not... You know, it's great if kids have a good relationship with their parents, and I think it's important for, you know, kids to have parents that they can, communicate with, but not everybody is, so fortunate. and you could see where that could lead to conflict and real problems and, issues. you know, it has these other features like, it will remove showing you likes because there's this feeling that, like, people start doing things just for the likes, which, is anecdotally very compelling, but I'm not sure that the research actually supports that. you know, there's things about, being able to have a non-algorithmic feed, which is something that a lot of people claim is really important. But again, the research doesn't necessarily support that. In fact, the research has shown that if you, force people into a non-algorithmic feed, they tend to see worse stuff because part of the algorithm is often, finding the better content. I will note, going back to my intro, that Rainbolt video was recommended to me by the YouTube algorithm. That's how I found it. So sometimes the algorithm recommends good stuff. Um, so there's, there's a bunch of those kinds of features that, like, people have raised concerns about. Where another area, another feature that I think or feature th-thing that I think is concerning is they have, like, uh, specific categories of content. So the specific one is disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters. and they define it fairly narrowly and carefully, and they say, like, "Oh, it doesn't include these other things that, aren't problematic." And, you know, you can look at this and say, Okay, I can understand where there are concerns about, encouraging teenagers to, do drastic cosmetic surgery or things like that." But we're getting into spaces where this is constitutionally protected speech, and as soon as you're in this space where, like, the government has pressured a company into saying, like, "We have to block this specifically defined content from children," it becomes really, really problematic. And the issue that I raised in my piece on it is, a lot of these things, like, if you just look at them, y- you say, like, "Sure, like, maybe kids shouldn't have access to this." And I, and I understand why Meta's doing them. But many of the feature changes, we don't know if they actually protect children. and you can make cases where they probably protect some children, but you can also look at this, this stuff, and I, I've been having discussions... Actually, just this morning before we were even recording, I was having a discussion with someone who, who has some expertise on, suicide prevention, and was looking at some of the feature changes and saying, This might be really damaging to kids going through some mental health issues, where if these are not implemented well, it could cause, teenagers dealing with a mental health episode to spiral in some ways." and so there is this element of, people talk about, like, oh, it's unfair or it's bad that companies are experimenting on our children with their algorithmic feeds or the different features and, you know, we don't know if it's safe or whatever. But this is also an experiment, and this is because in some back room somewhere, a bunch of Meta lawyers and a bunch of state attorneys general got together and just decided in that room what they think will make kids safer. And I don't think that there were probably that many child safety experts in that room, and we don't actually know if any of these feature changes will actually protect kids. Will, in some cases, will it make them worse? And there doesn't seem to be... You know, the settlement agreement does allow Meta to study some of these issues, but, you know, they're still sort of locked into them. And there is, like, an independent auditor that is a part of the process, but the independent auditor is to, audit that Meta is actually doing these things, not that they're working or protecting children in any way.

Ben Whitelaw 26:46

Yeah. Well, there is this, independent social media research foundation, which it sounds nice, but there is not a lot of detail about what information would be available to researchers, academics, whether that would be historical data, live data, and whether it would kind of chronicle, this period under which these changes will be made. So I think that, that's a fair call out. I, I also wanted to kind of point out, I guess, on the time limits, two hours a day across Meta products sounds good. I think we, we had this idea that, teenagers are using their phones a lot on social media, that that maybe is a reduction. I was looking up, one poll, one Gallup poll in advance of chatting, and, and there's apparently boys and, girls between the age of 13 and 18 spend about five hours on social media. And Meta are not the top most used

Mike Masnick 27:36

I was gonna say it's not Meta that they're spending that time on.

Ben Whitelaw 27:39

right? So, so according to this one poll based upon 2,000 US teens, YouTube is, is around two hours. TikTok is, around, an hour and a half across boys and, and girls. Instagram is an hour. Facebook is, 3 of a, of an hour. So and it will come onto this, and I think it's relevant because we- we're gonna talk about Meta becoming an industry standard and how they are, they've made some contingencies within the settlement, that relate to their competitors, YouTube and TikTok. So I think this two hours sounds like a, a lot. it maybe isn't as, as little as we thought

Mike Masnick 28:15

Yeah. I mean, when you look at it, and then we'll get into what the requirements are for other platforms, but yeah, somebody pointed out, like, this would not actually probably diminish that much usage of Meta products because most people don't use them more than two hours. It is the combined with other platforms. But, you know, if you look at the other platforms, the YouTube and the TikTok, a lot of that interaction and engagement is a different type, right? YouTube is more sort of sit back and watch engagement. That can be true of, Instagram, but Instagram is l- usually a little bit more engaged and involved and, reading, replying, all that kind of stuff. TikTok, I think, is somewhere in between. You know, it is a lot of just sort of watching videos, but also some level of engagement. and I think YouTube is-- tends to be more just sit back and watch. More people use YouTube as a kind of modern TV rather than social media in that sense. And so, this gets at the thing that, like, all these different platforms are somewhat different, and treating them all as the same can be problematic. Which gets to the next concern of this agreement and the weirdest part of the agreement, which is that Meta has to try to convince specifically YouTube and TikTok to put in place the same features, or not all of the same features, but most of the same features, and limits. And that is weird on almost every level.

Ben Whitelaw 29:44

not only that, right? But the £5 billion of the

Mike Masnick 29:47

Yes.

Ben Whitelaw 29:48

is contingent upon them doing

Mike Masnick 29:50

Yes, which is also just incredibly strange because there's an element where it's like, okay, if Meta fails and cannot get YouTube and TikTok to agree to this, which also includes getting them to contribute a similar amount of money to the states, then Meta doesn't have to pay the $5 billion. So Meta's in this weird position where it's like it can save $5 billion from this agreement if YouTube, and TikTok don't agree to this. But, from the competitive side of it, you know that Meta wants to get them to do it because, as you pointed out, kids spend more time on YouTube and TikTok than they do on Instagram. And so if Meta can convince YouTube to put a two-hour limit on watch time, that actually benefits them because kids will cut off their YouTube watching at two hours, and what else are they gonna do? Ah, I guess we'll scroll over to Instagram.

Ben Whitelaw 30:44

Yeah

Mike Masnick 30:45

And so this is like, it's really, really, really weird in how it's structured.

Ben Whitelaw 30:51

Yeah. And you know what? I, I read this and I thought, these guys are playing checkers while everyone else plays chess. Like, this is, this is the kind of move that you have to just, like, hold your hands up and go, "Wow, that is... No, no one would've thought that that was even possible," right? Or, or like that this was a kind of even something that the attorney generals would be up for. and it isn't something that has been the focus of the reporting. The most of the reporting done by major outlets has been focused on the framing has been kind of as a success for the states and this is a kind of success for the users because there are these limits or are these features that will be disabled at certain points. this element has been much less discussed, and I think that's why we wanted to kind of talk about it. So they're playing a very interesting game here, Meta, and they've obviously put a price on, their ability to convince YouTube and TikTok to what they call is, create an industry-wide solution, for child safety. it's a bit like kind of, you know, if we're going down, we're

Mike Masnick 31:49

Yes.

Ben Whitelaw 31:50

you guys down with us

Mike Masnick 31:51

Yeah. Or the alternative way of looking at it is it's regulatory capture through judicial settlement, which is, you know, a slightly different form of regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is usually because there's like a, you know, a law that comes into place, but you help write the law or you help administer the law in some form or another. But in this case, it's through the settlement and then sort of saying like, "We're gonna help try and pressure everybody else into this." Therefore... if you take a step back, it's basically Meta getting to write the standards for child safety across the big players of the internet. And if you don't believe that Meta has been particularly good... Like I-- what amazes me of the people celebrating this are the same people who are like, "Meta is terrible, and we don't trust them." And now you have handed them the pen to write the rules of how internet safety for children works across the internet. And even if you say, "Well, it's just limited to these biggest players," they can convince YouTube and TikTok to go along with it, the trickle-down of this is also really problematic because now what is happening is you've blessed these specific things, the two-hour limit, the hidden likes, the things that we don't know whether or not they actually work. But if any other platform wants to avoid getting sued in the future, the easiest thing to do is just say, "Well, we're doing the industry-wide standard as defined in this settlement between Meta and all of these states." And so the way to reduce liability if you're a company, a smaller company, an upstart trying to do something different, maybe you have an idea of how to actually protect children more. That's now risky. the easiest thing, the thing to do to reduce and avoid liability is to just go with the flow, take what Meta has agreed to and say, "We're just gonna do that because that is the industry standard." And that really concerns me, especially when we don't know what actually works right now.

Ben Whitelaw 33:49

Yeah. I think that's a, a, perfect point to end today's free episode. I think I, I can see you're getting on, into a roll, and that's a perfect time, I think, to, flip over to our Patreon extended episode. listeners, if you want to hear Mike continue his, uh, his thought process, um, use that Trust Con code while you can. sign up to become a supporter for either $10 or $20 a month, and, uh, we'll see you on the other side. Thanks for listening.

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