I was giving a talk about the impacts of tech and AI on how we think recently, and I said, ‘You guys remember noong nauubos ang FB feed?’ I noticed one person in the audience looking quizzical, and then I said, ‘Yeah, you would run out of posts and you would just be done.’ That person’s jaw dropped, almost unable to comprehend a time before the infinite scroll.
I am thinking about that moment because it got me thinking about how different our experience of social networks used to be. Right now, everyone seems to be on social media, but so few people actually say they enjoy it or have fun being there. ‘They have to’ because everyone is there, they don’t want to miss certain things, but at the same time, we finish scrolling and it makes us feel awful.
Things changed. And while social media companies like to throw their hands up and say, ‘It’s just the algorithm doing its thing, giving people what they want,’ we might be at a moment where things might change again. Hopefully for the better now.
A very big settlement
On August 26, 2026, Meta settled a case that was filed by a coalition of attorneys general in the US for ‘designing and implementing features that it knew to be harmful to children and teens in order to maximize their time on its social media platforms.’ This comes on the heels of previous rulings holding Meta (and Google) accountable in cases in California and New Mexico.
In this specific settlement Meta will pay at least 12.1 billion USD, spread across the states that filed cases, with that amount rising to as much as 17.1 billion if competitors like TikTok and YouTube reach similar settlements of their own. That sounds like a lot of money, but had the case gone to a verdict and Meta lost, they could have lost up to 200 billion USD.
Along with the payments, there are a number of features that they are expected to introduce as part of the settlement:
Age verification
Two-hour daily limit for users under 18, except for messaging
Blocks for under-18 between midnight and 6 a.m.
Blocking or limiting push notifications for minors at night and during school hours
Letting parents set non-algorithmic feeds as part of parental supervision features
These are only a few of the features, and along with those are strengthening of already existing features, like banning cosmetic filters and improving content policies to limit exposure to age-inappropriate content. One of the positions that Meta has taken is ‘It’s not just us, it’s everybody.’
If they are going to have to make adjustments that possibly handicap their business-which unfortunately was built on preying on insecurities and hacking the attention of young people-then they want everyone else to. My thought is I don’t want to let Meta play hero here, but they are correct in that all social media products need to be designed so they aren’t harmful to the young.
But it’s not just the kids who aren’t alright
There are so many conversations about age limits and age bans. And while it’s absolutely an important thing, I think we always need to zoom out when we look at the problems we want to solve. Sometimes the focus becomes ‘what is the exact correct age?’ Others it’s ‘what is the mechanism for age verification?’ Both are important, as the former acknowledges different kinds of maturity levels that need to be considered, while the latter looks at systems and security. My zoom out view of this though is, what does that age limit or block matter if we are eventually releasing people into an unsafe space.
I imagine this in two different ways. One is with social media framed like a rollercoaster. It’s unsafe if you’re too small for it, if it’s a little too intense for people of a certain age. But once you hit that height minimum then you should be able to survive and enjoy yourself in the rollercoaster. But I believe that social media isn’t like this. It’s actually a dangerous space not just for young people but for everyone.
The product design decisions that include algorithmic feeds and the dopamine-hit nature of infinite scrolls make it a dangerous place. We are talking not just about young people and their self-esteem, self-worth, and harms related to their development. We can also think about how even adults can fall victim to the same harmful trends. Add onto that the radicalization that can happen. The falls into disinformation and conspiracy theory thinking and communities. The scams and other security vulnerabilities. And the way that social media feeds can hijack our attention to create data and value for the platforms.
While the rulings and settlements are around cases that protect children, we need to realize that the impact of how social media is built in a harmful way can impact everyone, not just the young.
Product design decisions can be fixed
For the longest time, Meta and other platforms have claimed that people’s feeds are decided by the algorithm. You see more of what you want to see. And they don’t have control of the algorithm, it just learns what you wants and gives you more.
But we know better now. Rage-bait and divisive content lead to higher engagement, and when given a choice, to curb this and other harms, Meta chose harms and engagement over user well-being.
I’ll go back to my original point, which is that social networks felt better before the algorithmic feed. And once the product design decision had been made to switch everyone over to these, we had no power and no choice. This led to higher engagement, more views, more money for Meta, more control for them, but it also brought us to where we are now.
So while there are many provisions that are part of this settlement, I want to focus on the option to switch to a chronological and non-algorithmic feed.
Seeing your friends again
It’s hard to put a finger on when exactly it happened on my FB and IG feeds, but I just stopped seeing my friends. Now IG is a nonstop feed of things being sold to me by people I don’t follow. FB is full of slop and my friends every once in a while.
But if Meta can offer a non-algorithmic feed to teens, then there’s absolutely nothing stopping them, from a tech perspective, from offering that to us. In fact, there’s not been anything on a tech level that’s stopping them.
What stops them is the business aspect to it. If we switched back to chronological feeds, their products wouldn’t be so engaging, then we wouldn’t spend so much time on them. This would probably be better for us as individuals and I might even assert it might be better for society as a whole. But this would be very, very bad for Meta.
A Meta office in the Philippines
There are no rulings in the Philippines thus far. The big news is that Meta will share information with authorities for investigations and to address threats. But these rulings in the US are clear signals that there is harmful design in Meta’s products, and these are the same products in any geography.
In the past, I felt like an old man yelling at clouds when I wanted to have my non-algorithmic feed back. There’s definitely something broken with social media, but I don’t think giving up on the social web is the solution. Fixing it at the product level would be a major step, and these ruling might give us a path forward to demanding those fixes.