Meta agrees to settle social media case for $16.68 billion; Nvidia tops Q2 expectations

Meta (META) agreed to settle a social media addiction case with a group of state attorneys general on Wednesday, putting an end to the trial in its second week. The stock initially popped on the news before paring gains.

The case revolved around allegations from 29 states that Instagram and Facebook developed products to hook young users on the platforms and harvested the data of children under 13 to their benefit.

According to court filings, Meta denied wrongdoing and agreed to pay up to $16.68 billion.

In a statement on the company’s website, Meta said, “Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta. We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”

According to DC Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb, these are among the safety features Meta has agreed to implement:

• Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children on its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Meta will adopt a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.

• “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access to feeds from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m and silencing notifications from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

• Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.

• Strict age verification measures and safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.

• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

• Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes for kids.

• Regular assessment by an independent auditor of the implementation and efficacy of the safety features, with oversight by the settling states.

Nvidia earnings beat expectations

Meta isn’t the only tech giant making headlines. Nvidia (NVDA) reported its Q2 earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines and providing a better-than-expected outlook for the third quarter.

For Q2, Nvidia saw adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.22 on revenue of $96.2 billion, which is better than the EPS of $2.09 and revenue of $92.3 billion that Wall Street was anticipating.

The company also says it is projecting Q3 revenue of between $105.8 billion and $110.1 billion. Wall Street was calling for $1.51 billion.