Florida’s attorney general is asking a court to make sure Meta (Facebook and Instagram) puts in place a system to check the age of all its users in that state.
If the court grants the motion, every user in Florida will have to surrender their privacy and will have to verify their age to access speech and, if they are under 14, Meta will have to remove them from the platforms. And if Meta can’t do that within 30 days, it will have to cut off every user under 18 until it implements the age-checking system.
In the meantime, the court is asked to order Meta to set limits on the use of its platforms by teenagers, including hours when they can use them, and features they can access.
“Request proof of age for Instagram and Facebook accounts belonging to users that Meta’s systems know or predict to be under the age of 14, and mark for deletion the accounts of those who do not verify their age within 30 days,” the filing says.
It also wants Meta to “Adopt and apply an age assurance framework to every Teen User.”
It asks Meta to “Treat users who Meta has reason to believe are under 14 or under 18 years of age as under those respective ages unless the users age verify.”
The motion spells it out: “If within 30 days of the entry of this injunction, Meta cannot implement the measures for user-age verification and removal in this and the prior sections, Meta must cease to allow any Young Users access to its Platforms in Florida until these measures are implemented.” Young Users means users under 18.
The default mode for teens should be “quiet mode from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. year-round, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on academic-year weekdays”, the filing says. It also wants Meta to hide “like” counts from teenagers by default, disable autoplay and infinite scroll unless a parent turns them on, and limit the time spent on the platforms to “not more than 60 hours per month.”
The motion mentions internal Meta communications, including one that says “IG is a drug” and another that reads, “We’re basically pushers.”
Another employee is quoted as saying about hiding “like” counts, “It’s a social comparison app, fucking get used to it.”
The court is yet to rule on the motion, but Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the filing on X, saying, “We just asked a Florida court to order Meta to turn off the features that addict teenagers and to leave Florida kids alone when they’re in school or sleeping.”
Uthmeier also revealed that Meta tried to get Florida to accept a settlement, but was rebuffed. “Meta tried to get us to take their low-ball settlement, but we wont sell out our kids,” he wrote.
The attorney general’s motion calls the national settlement a “mere slap on the wrist” for a company that is valued at “roughly $1.86 trillion.”
The filing says that the requested relief “tracks relevant aspects of the injunctive relief in the multidistrict-litigation settlement.”
In August, 51 states and territories settled with Meta for $11.66 billion over a decade, but Florida opted out of that deal.
Florida has its own law, HB 3, that bans children under 14 from social media, and in April, Meta said it would comply with it by removing accounts of under-14s in that state.
In order to do that, however, Meta must check the age of every user, including adults. In May, the company began removing accounts of under-14s in Florida. The August settlement that 51 states and territories reached with Meta requires the company to apply age assurance to every Facebook and Instagram user in those states by using ID verification and facial age estimation.
Last week, Florida’s attorney general asked a court to order OpenAI to put in place “a robust and effective age verification system” for ChatGPT.
A court order that makes every Florida teenager prove their age, or lose the app entirely, is an identity checkpoint built without a vote, and you cannot check teenagers without checking everyone.
