The settlement focuses on limiting access to the app at certain times as a default setting, and in many of these areas, teens or parents will be able to switch from these settings to less restrictive ones. Senior Commission officials have previously criticized Meta’s parental controls for their complexity.
But Meta will only give users the option to turn off the features most closely associated with engagement maximization, like autoplay and personalized feeds, instead of making them the default for every child, said Francesca Pisanu, senior policy officer at child rights group Eurochild.
“The U.S. settlement establishes a combination of strong defaults, usage restrictions and parental controls, while the Commission’s preliminary approach more explicitly challenges the underlying engagement-maximising architecture of the platforms themselves,” said Pisanu.
Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director at the child rights group 5Rights Foundation, said: “Changes which focus on limiting children’s access will not prevent continued exploitation and harm to children.”
For now, Meta has held back from committing to roll out the changes it will make in the U.S. to users worldwide. It has said it will monitor how these changes are working in the U.S. and continue to engage with other governments. That’s despite officials’ explicit requests to do so in the U.K., South Korea and elsewhere.
On Wednesday night, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Pat McFadden, told Sky News he expected Meta to extend the changes to the U.K., saying the government didn’t want “a situation where young people in America have got a higher rate of protection than young people in the U.K.”