Buried in Meta's $18B settlement is a legal pass on kids' data | TechCrunch

Meta reached a settlement worth $18 billion with the attorneys general of 29 states. As part of the settlement, states agreed not to prosecute Meta for retaining and using child data under existing child safety laws, but this exemption applies only to the training and testing of Meta’s age protection models. According to the agreement, Meta must develop and launch a detection model for users under 13 years old within one year after the agreement takes effect, and it is strictly prohibited to use such data for targeted advertising, marketing, or algorithm optimization. Although the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) typically restricts the collection of children’s personal information, the settlement document confirms that Meta does not need to violate this law to implement the above models, and the attorneys general of each state promised “complete, final, and permanent” non-claims. Additionally, independent auditors will monitor Meta’s compliance, although the specific challenges related to data isolation and details on future model changes remain unclear.