Jackson Jambalaya

ONE: Every user gets age-checked, not just teens

The age checks can't be limited to teenagers – they apply to every user. That's according to Section II.A.1 of the judgment, which requires Meta to apply its age assurance to every single social media user in the settling states.

Section II.A.6.a.i further clarifies that this applies to both new and existing accounts, meaning every Facebook and Instagram user in those states.

The methods are specified in Section II.A.3.b as ID verification and facial age estimation. If neither meets the required accuracy thresholds, Meta and the states will "meet and confer" to come up with an alternative – meaning that if the age checks fail, they are not abandoned; they are escalated.

Two states, Illinois and Texas, have previously won record biometric-privacy settlements from Meta – $650 million and $1.4 billion, respectively. Illinois has now signed a judgment that names facial age estimation as a method to be used on every user in those states, the same kind of technology central to those biometric cases.

The release at IV.A covers only the conduct alleged in the case, and does not extend to future scanning, so Illinois has not signed away its citizens' biometric-privacy rights that it so often says it supports. But it has agreed to a deal that will see every one of those citizens age-checked by the very method that once cost Meta so much.

TWO: It routes around the First Amendment, and the drafting proves it was deliberate

The age-verification consent judgement routes around the First Amendment.

This has been achieved by including two paragraphs next to each other in Section X of the agreement, which is also repeated as IX.G of the consent judgment.

X.E preserves Meta's right to challenge any federal, state or local law, rule, regulation or guidance, whether presently enacted or enacted in the future.

X.F, in the very next paragraph, has both parties waive any right to challenge or contest the validity of the agreement on any ground, including that any term is unconstitutional or preempted by or in conflict with any current or future law.

These two paragraphs mean that Meta retains the right to sue over every age-verification law ever written, while giving up the right to challenge the one it just agreed to.

This is particularly egregious given the record of similar legislation being blocked or permanently enjoined in courts, mostly on First Amendment grounds. Those laws were in Arkansas, Utah, Ohio, Texas, and Louisiana, while Virginia's one-hour limit for under-16s was blocked in February.

It's the same policy, but this time negotiated rather than tested in court, means there is no plaintiff and therefore no judicial scrutiny.

THREE: Refuse to verify and you are treated as a child

One of the many ways Big Tech has been conditioning internet users to accept, and even welcome, digital ID, is by making the alternative very unappealing. On Facebook and Instagram, that means being treated as a minor.

Section II.A.10 of the settlement spells it out: fourteen days after creating an account, a user who has not been assessed by an age assurance method is treated as a Teen User regardless of stated age. That means that they are subject to a number of restrictions: their account is capped at two hours of usage per day, they are cut off from midnight to 6am, they cannot see how many likes and other reactions their posts have received, and their feed is filtered.

The only way to avoid this is to hand over ID, but nobody is forcing you to do that; you are simply downgraded to a minor's version of the internet until you do. This is often referred to as "consent by attrition."

Those hoping that the settlement at least brings in some clarity and finality to this process will be disappointed, because, as usual, the devil is in the details. The judgment at II.B blocks non-parties from enforcing the settlement – and at IV.C.1(f) it preserves the separate claims private individuals may have.

So, you cannot enforce this against Meta. The only route is Meta's own appeals process, as stated at II.A.9 – and that only applies to adults who are wrongly identified as minors.

FOUR: Meta has wanted this for years, and the contract now pays the states to force it on everyone else

Meta has for years been trying to get this exact policy of forcing age verification on everyone in the US, and now it has a contract that pays the settling states to make sure that happens.

The giant has been very active in trying to get to this point. It lobbied both in Washington and in Brussels for rules that would force Apple and Google to accept age verification in their app stores, and sued several US states to prevent them from passing their own age verification laws.

But it was never that Meta was opposed to age verification per se – it was just opposed to carrying the liability for implementing it. And now, it has managed to get others to agree to take on that role, while it profits to the tune of billions of dollars.

The contract, made public as part of the settlement with the state attorneys general, commits Meta to incorporating age signals from Apple and Google operating systems and app stores, with an Independent Auditor advising on the reliability of those signals.

This is the same architecture that app-store statutes in Texas and California have. The Texas law, SB 2420, is already in force after the Fifth Circuit lifted an injunction against it in May. The California law, AB 1043, will start requiring device-level age signals from 2027.

Meta's contract came with an open letter from attorneys general to TikTok and YouTube, urging them to adopt the same measures. The contract, meanwhile, defines "Core Industry Members" as Snap, TikTok, and YouTube in Section I.W.

Three clauses in the settlement make this happen. Exhibit B guarantees Meta $1.166 billion a year, and makes another $502 million annual payment contingent on Snap, TikTok and YouTube joining the agreement as well, for a total of $16.68 billion over ten years, of which $11.66 billion is guaranteed and $5.02 billion is contingent on the other three companies signing up.

The second clause, VI.D.3, states that if a state fails to hit its Contingent Monetary Payment Trigger during the term, the contingency payments are permanently forfeited and kept by Meta; but on a per-state basis, rather than the money being pooled. This means that every attorney general has a number riding on getting Snap, TikTok and YouTube to join the agreement – and will lose that money if they fail. For Virginia, this is $15.2 million per year.

And the third, V.D, the Meta Injunctive most-favored-nation clause, says that if a settling state later cuts a deal with any Core Industry Member on terms better than Meta's obligations under II.A, II.B and III, the state will consent to modify Meta's agreement to match – with only the under-13 framework carved out. Paired with the Industry-Wide Adoption clause – under which rivals may exclude no features beyond messaging and long-form content without Meta's written waiver – Meta holds both a floor and a ceiling on what its competitors can negotiate.

And the "tell" is in the New SMP Entrant clause that automatically captures future platforms but excludes AI features, chatbots, and interactions with artificial intelligence. This is especially interesting given that Meta has spent this year in the press trying to position itself as an AI-first company.

Note: Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.