Meta’s $18B child-safety deal hinges on age-verification tech that doesn’t work well
Meta’s $18B child-safety deal hinges on age-verification tech that doesn’t work well
Meta 达成的 180 亿美元儿童安全协议，关键在于尚不成熟的年龄验证技术
Meta reached an $18 billion settlement on Wednesday over a lawsuit brought by 29 U.S. states concerning children’s safety. The settlement is historic in scale as Meta agrees with a group of 52 attorneys general to implement sweeping changes to how minors use Instagram and Facebook. 周三，Meta 就 29 个美国州针对儿童安全问题提起的诉讼达成了 180 亿美元的和解协议。此次和解规模具有历史意义，Meta 与 52 位州总检察长达成一致，将对其未成年人使用 Instagram 和 Facebook 的方式进行全面改革。
The settlement “gives the AGs what they want, which is the political story that they’ve extracted a huge amount of benefit for the public from this settlement, including the platform changes,” Jessica Nall, a technology litigator at Withers, told TechCrunch. But Nall noted the settlement’s real-dollar impact is softer than the headline number suggests. “The fact that it’s being paid over 10 years really does blunt the financial impact of the large number, especially compared to Meta’s annual revenue … We’re talking about one of these tech companies where their annual revenue is larger than the GDP of most European countries.” Withers 律师事务所的技术诉讼律师 Jessica Nall 对 TechCrunch 表示，该和解协议“满足了总检察长们的需求，即通过这一协议为公众争取到了巨大福祉，包括平台层面的变革，这在政治上是一个很好的叙事”。但 Nall 指出，和解协议的实际财务影响远没有标题数字看起来那么大。“这笔钱分 10 年支付，确实削弱了这一大额数字的财务冲击力，尤其是与 Meta 的年收入相比……我们谈论的是一家年收入超过大多数欧洲国家 GDP 的科技巨头。”
Indeed, Meta reported more than $200 billion in total revenue in 2025, which puts the $18 billion price tag in perspective. But the bigger story here isn’t the dollar amount. It’s what Meta now has to build: the most detailed child-safety rules any major platform has agreed to, resting on age-verification technology that still doesn’t work particularly well. 事实上，Meta 报告称 2025 年总收入超过 2000 亿美元，这使得 180 亿美元的和解金显得并不那么惊人。但这里更重要的不是金额，而是 Meta 现在必须构建的内容：这是任何大型平台同意实施的最详细的儿童安全规则，而其基础却是目前表现并不理想的年龄验证技术。
Meta hasn’t admitted wrongdoing, even as it settles allegations that it intentionally designed its platforms to keep children hooked — a common tactic for companies looking to avoid a jury trial, where the risk of a worse outcome is higher. A ruling against Meta could also have jeopardized the legal protections that allow social platforms to escape liability for what users post. 尽管 Meta 就其被指控故意设计平台以诱导儿童上瘾的问题达成了和解，但它并未承认任何不当行为——这是企业为避免陪审团审判（因为审判结果可能更糟）而采取的常见策略。针对 Meta 的不利裁决还可能危及社交平台免于承担用户发布内容责任的法律保护。
“I think it’s wise of them to try to get out of it, especially without a legal finding against them on any of the First Amendment issues and the Section 230 issues, which are still alive,” Nall said. “That could be existential, potentially, not just for Meta but for every tech company that has a product that engages with users, which is almost all of them.” “我认为他们试图摆脱诉讼是明智的，特别是在没有就第一修正案和第 230 条款等悬而未决的问题做出不利于他们的法律裁决的情况下，”Nall 说。“这不仅对 Meta，对每一家拥有用户交互产品的科技公司（几乎涵盖所有科技公司）来说，都可能关乎生死存亡。”
Meta’s settlement also reignites ongoing concern over age-verification measures that are intended to protect children online but can, in practice, create new privacy risks for both kids and adults. “This is a classic debate around prioritizing safety over privacy,” Dr. Alexis Ingber, a professor of communications at Syracuse University, told TechCrunch. “The perspective is, if we want to keep children safe on Meta platforms, here are all the design things we’re gonna have to do, but we’re gonna have to also do this age verification thing that’s gonna take away from people’s data privacy and will introduce these new data privacy concerns.” Meta 的和解协议也重新引发了人们对年龄验证措施的持续担忧。这些措施旨在保护在线儿童，但在实践中可能会给儿童和成人带来新的隐私风险。雪城大学传播学教授 Alexis Ingber 博士对 TechCrunch 表示：“这是关于‘安全优先还是隐私优先’的经典辩论。观点在于，如果我们想确保儿童在 Meta 平台上的安全，我们就必须采取一系列设计措施，但同时也必须实施年龄验证，这会削弱人们的数据隐私，并引入新的隐私隐患。”
Under the settlement’s terms, Meta has proposed a list of design changes, including a default two-hour daily screen-time limit for app use, plus prompts that appear every 15 minutes to “encourage intentional use.” Accounts that Meta identifies as belonging to minors will also default to being blocked from Meta apps overnight (between midnight and 6 a.m.) and will have notifications muted during school hours (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.). By default, teens won’t be able to see “like” counts on their own posts or others’, among other changes. 根据和解条款，Meta 提出了一系列设计变更，包括默认每日两小时的应用使用时长限制，以及每 15 分钟弹出一次提示以“鼓励有意识地使用”。Meta 识别为未成年人的账户还将默认在夜间（午夜至凌晨 6 点）被禁止使用 Meta 应用，并在上课时间（上午 8 点至下午 3 点）静音通知。默认情况下，青少年将无法看到自己或他人帖子的“点赞”数量，以及其他相关调整。
“The design changes that were proposed in the settlement seem great on paper, but they are all reliant upon successful, effective, and unbiased age verification technology,” Dr. Ingber said. “You need to be able to identify that that’s a child versus an adult, and the way that we do that right now is not really effective … I’m very curious to see how Meta is going to move forward with trying to do that, given that by and large, these technologies have failed.” “和解协议中提出的设计变更在纸面上看起来很棒，但它们都依赖于成功、有效且无偏见的年龄验证技术，”Ingber 博士说。“你需要能够区分儿童和成人，而我们目前的方法并不真正有效……我非常好奇 Meta 将如何推进这一工作，因为总的来说，这些技术目前都失败了。”
Age-verification technology has evolved well beyond clicking “Yes, I am 21” on a liquor website. Companies now typically verify age through biometric scans (like a selfie), government ID checks, or analysis of behavioral patterns, and each comes with its own flaws. Behavioral analysis can misjudge adults as minors or vice versa, while ID and biometric checks require kids, and adults, to hand sensitive documents over to a third party just to use an app. Some users also don’t trust platforms to roll out age-verification responsibly. Discord learned this firsthand when it tried to implement global age verification earlier this year and had to delay the rollout after significant user backlash. 年龄验证技术已经远远超出了在酒类网站上点击“是的，我已满 21 岁”的范畴。如今，公司通常通过生物识别扫描（如自拍）、政府身份证件核验或行为模式分析来验证年龄，但每种方法都有其缺陷。行为分析可能会将成年人误判为未成年人，反之亦然；而身份证件和生物识别检查则要求儿童和成人都必须将敏感文件交给第三方才能使用应用。一些用户也不信任平台能负责任地推出年龄验证。Discord 今年早些时候尝试实施全球年龄验证时就亲身体验到了这一点，在遭到用户强烈抵制后不得不推迟了发布。
Not everyone shares that pessimism, though. “I think the technology has evolved quite a bit in the last few years since these concerns started coming up, and I do think there are ways that [companies] can provide or implement age assurance technologies,” Philip Yannella, co-chair of the privacy and data security group at law firm Blank Rome, told TechCrunch. “I’m not going to say they won’t have potential privacy issues, but they could greatly lessen the privacy issues.” 不过，并非所有人都持悲观态度。Blank Rome 律师事务所隐私与数据安全组联席主席 Philip Yannella 对 TechCrunch 表示：“我认为自这些担忧出现以来的几年里，技术已经有了很大进步，我确实认为（公司）有办法提供或实施年龄保证技术。我不会说它们不会有潜在的隐私问题，但它们可以大大减轻这些隐私问题。”
Yannella added that companies don’t need to store users’ personal information to verify their age. “There are ways you can verify someone’s age, create a token that would signal that this particular IP is associated with someone who’s below the age of 13, below the age of 16, whatever it is, but discard the personal information,” he said. Still, Ingber and other experts caution that even if companies don’t retain this data, simply transmitting sensitive identity information online carries its own privacy risk. A breach of ID scans or facial biometric data tied to minors creates the risk of identity theft, and unlike a password, a leaked face or fingerprint can’t be changed. Yannella 补充说，公司无需存储用户的个人信息即可验证其年龄。“有一些方法可以验证某人的年龄，创建一个令牌来标记该特定 IP 与 13 岁以下或 16 岁以下的人相关联，但随后丢弃个人信息，”他说。尽管如此，Ingber 和其他专家警告称，即使公司不保留这些数据，仅仅在网上传输敏感的身份信息本身就带有隐私风险。与未成年人关联的身份证件扫描件或面部生物识别数据一旦泄露，会带来身份盗用的风险，而且与密码不同，泄露的面部信息或指纹是无法更改的。
Meanwhile, as Meta and the 52 state attorneys general finalize these guidelines — which Meta must follow for the next 10 years — the company is framing the settlement not as a concession, but as proof that it’s a leader in children’s online safety. Meta is now running full-page newspaper ads calling on TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar design changes, without mentioning that its own adoption came as part of a legal settlement. 与此同时，随着 Meta 和 52 位州总检察长敲定这些准则（Meta 在未来 10 年内必须遵守），该公司将此次和解描述为证明其在儿童在线安全领域处于领先地位的证据，而非一种让步。Meta 目前正在报纸上刊登整版广告，呼吁 TikTok 和 YouTube 采取类似的设计变更，却只字未提其自身的这些举措是法律和解的一部分。