Meta's youth safety settlement could change how people access the internet

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Megan McCarty-Corino (1:01)

Critics are calling Meta's Teen Safety Plan an end run around the First Amendment. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

Meta agreed to a settlement last month in a landmark case over teen social media addiction. The company promised a slew of restrictions for young users like time limits, overnight blackouts and hidden likes. It also offered to pay up to $17 billion, partly contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting similar reforms.

Surveys show a strong majority of Americans support stricter limitations on social media for kids. But this settlement could fundamentally change how everyone accesses the Internet, according to Will Creeley. He's the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.

Will Creeley (2:00)

There are real concerns here about the ability to access information without having to show an ID first. This is essentially identity verification. And to separate children and teenagers from adults, everybody's going to have to show their ID at the door.

That means that anonymous speech rights on a major platform for expression are now out the door. And because of the way the settlement is structured, Meta is now essentially pressuring YouTube and TikTok to take the same steps, which means that the ability to speak out online without the government or big corporations knowing who you are, that got a little bit harder. And we're entering uncharted territory. Territory, the First Amendment itself would not permit. But because of this settlement is now going to be de facto best practice across the industry.

Megan McCarty-Corino (2:56)

Right. As you point out, many of the reforms that Meta has agreed to in this settlement, including this sort of broad kind of age verification of some sort, have been challenged in court when they have been sort of enacted as law by many states. Tell me more about kind of how that's played out.

Will Creeley (3:17)

Yeah, courts have been consistent that not only do teenagers and children have their own First Amendment rights, but attempts to require adult users to prove who they are before accessing protected speech, run headlong into the First Amendment's protection of anonymous speech. We have a long and storied tradition of protecting anonymous speech in this country, all the way back to the Federalist Papers. The government cannot require you to show your papers before accessing protected content. There's one small exception of recently a Supreme Court case called Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton said the state law in Texas that required adults to prove their identity before accessing content that would be obscene for minors, think pornography and other adult content, that was constitutionally permissible. But even that ruling broke with 25 years of First Amendment rulings to the contrary. So already, that's kind of contested space. And there's never been any suggestion from the court that it would be permissible to require adults to show their IDs just to get onto Facebook or access other protected speech online that wasn't obscene as to minors. So again, this settlement is an end to run around First Amendment protections.

And I think people are going to notice it.

Megan McCarty-Corino (4:38)

Tell me more about that. What do you mean this is an end run around First Amendment protections?

Will Creeley (4:43)

Well, if a state passed a law trying to require Meta to do what it's now agreed to do to settle this lawsuit, Meta would be in great position to challenge it on First Amendment grounds and to say, look, state, you don't have the power to tell me as a private organization how I need to or must curate speech or make editorial decisions about the services I provide. I have my own First Amendment right to run my website, which has nothing but speech on it, either pictures or content or words, etc.