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Jack Kubinec /

Forty-Seven States Couldn’t Stop Meta’s Algorithm

Meta’s $17.1 billion settlement over harms to teens was extraordinary, but it left its platforms’ core feature mostly intact.
A person walking past a large billboard displaying the Meta logo and "Hacker Way" text, surrounded by green foliage.
A pedestrian walks by the Meta headquarters on October 28, 2021, in Menlo Park, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Meta ended a raft of lawsuits from 47 states, Washington, D.C., and several U.S. territories in a combined settlement last week, dodging potentially hundreds of billions in damages in the process. But it didn’t come cheap. Meta agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and make significant changes to Instagram and Facebook.

Jack Kubinec is a reporter at The Dispatch, currently based in New York City and covering artificial intelligence. Before joining The Dispatch, he reported on crypto, most recently at Fortune Magazine. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. When he’s not writing about AI, he is probably enjoying the outdoors or watching a Buffalo Bills game. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

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