Last week, Meta—the company that owns Instagram and Facebook—agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by dozens of US states. The states accused Meta of harming children with addictive products. But the regulatory impact of this settlement will reach far beyond teenagers, affecting every social media user.
If Meta truly wants to put user safety first, its board should ask Mark Zuckerberg to step down and restructure the company so that safety matters more than profit.
The settlement doesn’t really answer the scientific question of how addictive social media actually is. Instead, it’s the result of a long fight that started in 2016, when journalists and independent researchers began looking into how digital design helped spread disinformation during the Brexit campaign in the UK and the US presidential election. Zuckerberg is the one constant thread running through Meta’s history of billion-dollar mistakes that have hurt real people.
For the past 15 years, I’ve studied how science and technology drive social change—both for good and for bad. As the founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute, I lead a team that investigates the harms caused by new technologies. We teach professionals about both the obvious and hidden features of these technologies, including their flaws. In 2020, I testified to Congress that misinformation works like “secondhand smoke.” My testimony came after a Meta executive compared the design of Meta’s engagement algorithms to how tobacco companies made cigarettes more addictive.
An $18 billion settlement—and Zuckerberg barely flinched. The tech giants must be stripped of their power, and soon.
In a series of op-eds, congressional briefings, and research papers, I expanded on the tobacco comparison. I showed how cultural views of smoking as a personal choice were changed by ideas like secondhand smoke and by scientific proof that tobacco raises cancer risk. The true costs of smoking were passed on to families, insurance companies, and employers who lost time and money dealing with it. The public health response didn’t ban smoking outright, but it did limit where people could smoke, set a minimum age for buying cigarettes, forced companies to fund public education about the dangers, and—most importantly—put cigarettes behind counters where cashiers had to check IDs. Public health campaigns and warning labels also played a big role.
In a similar way, social media companies make many important decisions about what appears in your feed. Some of those features are designed with algorithms to keep users on the app longer.
This settlement comes with design restrictions: teen accounts are limited to two hours a day, blocked from midnight to 6am, and get no notifications during school hours. Teen accounts also have to be linked to a parent’s account, along with stronger age checks. It’s still unclear how that will work in practice, but it’s likely to become a privacy headache. While these rules limit screen time for 13-to-18-year-olds, they don’t do much to address harmful content—like how drugs, sex, and gambling end up being recommended by algorithms.
It’s clear that this latest settlement signals a tougher road ahead for Zuckerberg’s companies. Meta has fought many legal battles while avoiding serious regulation of content moderation (which costs money) or advertising (which makes money). Enforcing these new rules for teens will raise costs. Meta has already faced billions in settlements and fines for issues ranging from failing to protect user privacy, to a 2018 security breach, to terrible outcomes for young people’s mental health. Meta has also caused harm to other groups without compensation, including amplifying hate speech against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and hosting and algorithmically promoting widespread medical misinformation and conspiracy theories that led to toxic poisoning and vaccine hesitancy—something the World Health Organization called anThe term “infodemic” captures how misinformation spreads like a virus. Mark Zuckerberg’s failures as a leader directly caused serious, well-documented harm to civic life, democracy, and people’s mental and physical health worldwide—especially among young people. Since starting Facebook in 2004, Zuckerberg has faced constant lawsuits over issues like ownership and stock from the early days. That’s when he began using a PR strategy to delay, deny, and deflect problems arising from executives choosing profit over user well-being. Meta’s leaders profited from the tragic amplification of hate, harassment, and incitement.
At the same time, this has created a wave of whistleblowers, and more are likely to come now that it’s clear these executives’ choices led to “real-world harm”—a Silicon Valley term that separates online spaces from real life. The settlement follows last week’s harsh hearings, where whistleblower Arturo Béjar boldly said, “You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids.” Béjar, who led safety efforts at Instagram, saw his teenage daughter face unwanted sexist harassment on the platform. Thanks to his role at Meta, he had real data to measure Instagram’s harms, including how different algorithmic changes affected growth, engagement, and user experience.
An $18 billion settlement is just a tiny fraction for Meta, but the pressure will keep building. Béjar estimates he met with Zuckerberg over 100 times before becoming a whistleblower. Many whistleblowers start by trying hard to fix issues through proper channels, only to face refusal from higher-ups. Ironically, they tend to be rule-followers who grow more frustrated as their concerns meet indifference or superficial compliance at work.
In December 2023, I faced intense backlash in academia after obtaining documents from another whistleblower, Frances Haugen, which I planned to share in a public database. I got the documents legally and used my expertise to help tech insiders, journalists, researchers, and Washington staffers understand what the Haugen documents did—and didn’t—reveal about Meta’s knowledge and responsibility for product issues. But the message was clear: Meta, then called Facebook, knew about the damage Instagram caused to teenage girls.
Yet, through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s wealth has climbed to nearly $200 billion, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to someone that rich, so the first step to protect society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products. His vision of “a future for everyone” is a shallow utopia where AI agents run your life and you just drift through it.
Beyond the courts, Meta could address this by asking Zuckerberg to step down voluntarily. Bringing hope for technology’s future means changing Meta’s leadership now, so the future is shaped collectively and built on a new reputation and commitment. Zuckerberg doesn’t deserve another chance just because he can afford it. In the end, we all pay for his mistakes. Now is the time for shareholders to speak up and challenge Zuckerberg’s control.
Joan Donovan is an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University, studying how technology affects society. She founded the Critical Internet Studies Institute, where she leads a project on political violence and social movements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the articles premise
General Background Questions
Q Who is Joan Donovan
A She is a prominent academic and researcher who studies how media technology and social movements interact She previously led the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvards Shorenstein Center
Q What is the main point of Joan Donovans argument
A Her main point is that Mark Zuckerberg has too much unchecked power over Meta She argues that his control over the companys algorithms and content policies has caused serious harm to democracy and public safety and that he should step down as CEO
Q Is this just about Facebook being unpopular
A No While Facebook has public image problems Donovans argument is more specific She focuses on structural flaws in how Meta is governed arguing that Zuckerberg makes unilateral decisions that prioritize growth and engagement over user safety and societal wellbeing
Q Why does she say Zuckerberg specifically needs to step down rather than just change the policies
A She argues that the problem is the concentration of power itself As long as Zuckerberg has majority voting control he can reverse any policy changes at will She believes a leadership change is necessary to actually reform the companys culture and accountability
Specific Criticisms Problems
Q What specific harm does Donovan say Meta has caused
A She points to several issues including amplifying misinformation about elections and vaccines facilitating hate speech and incitement to violence and failing to protect users data privacy
Q What does Donovan say about Zuckerbergs metaverse pivot
A She sees it as a distraction She argues that while Zuckerberg is spending billions of dollars building virtual reality worlds Meta is failing to fix the realworld harm happening right now on its existing platforms
Q What is the Capitol Riot connection in this argument
