JOEL ROSE, HOST:
How big of a deal was this week for the future of big tech? In a landmark settlement, the tech giant Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion and make changes to Instagram and Facebook. The changes are meant to make the platforms less addictive for children. But what that means for other tech companies - companies that have a bigger share of young users on their apps than Meta - is up in the air. Leah Plunkett has been thinking a lot about these questions. She is a lecturer at Harvard Law School who specializes in legal issues involving children and technology. Welcome to the program.
LEAH PLUNKETT: Great to be here.
ROSE: Meta agreed to pay billions of dollars in penalties and agreed to new restrictions on the times during the day that kids can use these apps. What stands out to you about this settlement?
PLUNKETT: Couple of big things stand out to me about this settlement. Meta is agreeing to take measures to address age inappropriate content, including high-risk viral challenges, cosmetic procedure filters, couple other areas where the ability of a state or federal legislature to regulate and require these types of restrictions would be difficult if not impossible because some aspects of them could be construed as limiting Meta's speech. So that, to me, is one of the biggest things that we are getting from this settlement agreement.
ROSE: OK. I mean, it sounds like you're optimistic about how much this is going to change, but not everyone shares that view. We talked this week to Vikram Bhargava. He is a professor at George Washington University. Here's some of what he told us.
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VIKRAM BHARGAVA: There was no acknowledgment in the settlement that the platforms of Meta's was causing any harm, and in doing so, I think that it sort of leaves the diagnosis of why these changes are required unanswered in a way that doesn't really give a principled basis to extend it to other places.
ROSE: So how important is that? - this idea that Meta agreed to these changes without acknowledging any harm that its products caused.
PLUNKETT: I'm not particularly concerned about the lack of acknowledgment of harm or wrongdoing in a settlement agreement, but this settlement agreement does not foreclose other public channels, such as the press, Joel, as well as - and perhaps most importantly - our schools and our communities, where a lot of the impacts of social media have been especially acutely felt, as well as especially burdensome.
ROSE: Meta said that it would run full-page print ads in several major newspapers to encourage its competitors like TikTok and Google to sign on to settlement agreements of their own. And a lot of the money that Meta would pay in this settlement, $5 billion, is conditioned on some of those others signing on. Do you think that they will?
PLUNKETT: I think they will. There is extraordinary momentum right now for coming up with ways to make social media more practical and ethical. Last year, we had almost 45 states introducing over 300 bills and resolutions on social media. The states are activated. And if I were advising the other major social media platforms, I would say the states are throwing, in many instances, everything they have at you - social media platforms - as they should be, and it would be prudent of you to get on board with a framework that is in place, it's consistent, and it is achievable for social media platforms.
ROSE: I want to steer you to some of the other possible implications of this settlement, and I want to talk about AI here. When we talk about the frontier of tech innovation and how it impacts children, you know, in some sense, the social media platforms are yesterday's war - right? - and we have to be talking about artificial intelligence. Could this settlement shape what AI companies are allowed to do in the future?
PLUNKETT: This settlement could and should shape what AI companies are allowed to do in the future. One way to think about this, Joel, is that we are now somewhere in Act 3, if you will, of how social media platforms play out in the lives of kids, families and communities. And in this Act 3, we are starting to move towards some amount of resolution regarding the parts of the social media platforms' impact that have been risky, harmful and, in some instances, catastrophic and tragic. So we're in Act 3.
The AI companies are at the beginning of Act 1 in terms of how they will engage with young people. I would say the writing is on the wall. If you are making a chatbot, let's say, that is all too ready to tell a teenager how to harm themselves or someone else, that is all too ready to engage a teenager in romantic or sexual fantasies that are inappropriate, take a look at what Meta has agreed to, and ideally, make it even broader and stronger so that from your Act 1, you are building AI and related tools that are innovative and basic common sense and common decency respecting.
ROSE: I want to take a step back here and ask about some of the other big settlement agreements that have shaped whole industries in the past. And I'm thinking here about, say, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of the 1990s or the settlement with the Sackler family more recently over the consequences of the opioid epidemic. How much of an effect do you expect this settlement to have in comparison with sort of those benchmarks?
PLUNKETT: I would distinguish especially the tobacco settlement in the following way. Tobacco is poison. Young people should not have tobacco, period, full stop. Opioids - a little more complicated in terms of, are there uses where an ethical, well-trained doctor could and should provide various forms of pain relief to patients, including minors? Yes.
I would say that social media platforms as distinguished - certainly from tobacco and even from opioids - have many positive roles to play in young people's lives. It is an ecosystem. It's a setting where older teens in particular can have positive interactions. So I think it would be a mistake for us to overindex too much on big tobacco or opioid comparisons because social media platforms are not poison or a drug.
ROSE: I've been speaking to Leah Plunkett. She is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Thank you very much for your time.
PLUNKETT: My pleasure.
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