Florida taking next step against Instagram after rejecting nationwide settlement

Filed 2h ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Fiddles McGinty

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House from Washington, DC · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Florida's attorney general filed an 85-page motion seeking a temporary injunction against Meta, asking for age verification, removal of under-14 users, elimination of 'addictive features,' and a nightly 'quiet mode' blocking app use between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. Florida and New Mexico were the only states that declined to join an $18 billion nationwide settlement with Meta earlier this year.

The motion quotes Meta's own internal documents allegedly admitting the company lacks a reliable way to detect or remove under-13 users at scale, despite public statements to Congress claiming otherwise. Florida points to New Mexico's litigation, where Meta already agreed to a 90-hour monthly usage cap, as proof such restrictions are feasible.

Meta did not respond before deadline but told Politico the state is pursuing a 'meritless' injunction years into litigation while trying to claim the benefits of a settlement it declined to join, and argued restricting one platform just pushes teens to YouTube and TikTok.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Meta's defense boils down to 'everybody else is doing it too,' which is the same excuse that never worked on a parent and isn't working much better on a judge. The internal memo about lacking a way to spot under-13 users is the kind of detail that makes the public promises look like something written for a press conference rather than a server. Florida wanting a stricter curfew than New Mexico isn't really the story; the story is that both numbers exist because nobody trusted the company to pick one on its own.

Source: Read the original at Florida Phoenix → Scored: Fiddles McGinty · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0