Newt Gingrich talks with California Attorney General Rob Bonta about the landmark Meta settlement and what it could mean for children, parents, and the future of social media.
A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general has reached a landmark settlement with Meta worth up to $17.1 billion, resolving allegations that the company designed features on Instagram and Facebook that encouraged compulsive use among children and teens while misleading the public about the risks. But the size of the settlement may not be its most consequential feature. Meta has also agreed to major changes affecting how young people use its platforms, including daily time limits, nighttime restrictions, stronger parental controls, age-assurance measures, and limits on features such as visible like counts and cosmetic surgery filters.
On this episode of Newt’s World, Newt Gingrich talks with California Attorney General Rob Bonta about how an unusually broad bipartisan coalition took on one of the world’s largest technology companies, what attorneys general say they learned during the litigation, and why the agreement could become a model for the rest of the social media industry. Their conversation also explores a larger question: What happens when technological innovation moves faster than the institutions responsible for protecting the public?
Listen to their conversation below, or scroll down for an edited transcript.
Edited Transcript
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Newt Gingrich
Last month, a coalition of 51 attorneys general announced what may be the largest settlement in the history of consumer protection law, a proposed $17 billion agreement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit that accused the company of designing features that drive compulsive use among children and teens while misleading the public about the risks.
The trial had already begun in federal court in California when the settlement was reached. Beyond the money, Meta has agreed to sweeping changes, including default time limits for minors, overnight blocks, a ban on like counts, the removal of cosmetic surgery filters for kids, and an independent auditor to enforce it all.
My guest today led that fight.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta was sworn in as California’s 34th Attorney General in 2021, becoming the first person of Filipino descent to hold the office. Before becoming Attorney General, Bonta spent more than eight years in the California State Assembly and earlier served as a deputy city attorney for San Francisco.
Attorney General Bonta, welcome, and thank you for joining me on Newt’s World.
Rob Bonta
My pleasure. Honored to be with you.
Newt Gingrich
I’m fascinated by what you achieved. Take me back to the beginning. This lawsuit was originally filed in 2023. What did your office allege Meta was actually doing to kids?
Rob Bonta
There was a growing set of science and data about the mental health harms of social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. Whistleblowers also started coming forward and talking about what was happening inside Meta.
We alleged that Meta knew about the mental health harms its designs and features were causing children. They doubled down on features and designs that caused those harms and lied about it to the public. So, essentially, it was a deception case.
We alleged they knew about the harms internally and acknowledged them but misled the public externally.
There was also a component of our case alleging that they were gathering and using the data of children under 13 in violation of federal law.
Around that time, we also brought a lawsuit against TikTok. This is an industry-wide problem. Meta was the first to get all the way to what we call a bellwether trial before we reached the settlement.
Newt Gingrich
You’re a Californian, and the center of all this is Silicon Valley. The scale of money is unbelievable. You must have known they had access to some of the best lawyers in the country. What did it feel like when you said, “We’re going to do this”?
Rob Bonta
We felt great about it because our cases are based on the facts and the law. We’re not performative. We’re not overreaching. We go where the facts and the law lead us.
No matter how much money you can write a check for or how great your attorneys are, they can’t change the facts and the law. We have great attorneys and a great team.
And when I say “we,” I want to make it very clear that this was a bipartisan effort. Almost every state in the nation, red and blue, came together to bring these cases against Meta.
Everyone was concerned about the conduct and the mental health harms being visited on our kids. In this day and age, when we don’t see as much bipartisanship as we might like, we did see it when it came to protecting kids from the mental health harms of social media platforms.
I was inspired by that and grateful to be able to help lead that team and get the result we got.
Newt Gingrich
What’s it like to coordinate that many different states? You have a huge management job on your side.
Rob Bonta
I do. My state Department of Justice is the largest in the nation. We’re about 5,500 employees and roughly 1,500 attorneys.
When we’re working across multiple states with different priorities and values, every attorney general represents their own sovereign state. They may weigh things differently, so it can be difficult.
We essentially had a Republican attorney general and a Democratic attorney general as two co-leads for the coalition. We didn’t agree on a lot of things, but we agreed on this case. We prioritized it, made time, found common ground, asked questions, and aligned our strategy.
Attorneys general have worked together in a bipartisan way many times. Our staffs are very skilled at it. Working together is part of our DNA, and we were able to do that here.
Newt Gingrich
You end up in federal court in Oakland. Was that a particular choice about where to file?
Rob Bonta
It was because that’s where we had the multidistrict litigation judge overseeing multiple cases by multiple states against the same entity for the same conduct.
The cases for 29 states were consolidated with a federal district court judge in Oakland. Some other states had their own cases going on around the same time, but the majority were part of this bellwether case in the multidistrict litigation in Oakland federal court.
Newt Gingrich
You get them into court, and less than two weeks later, right in the middle of testimony, Meta says, “Let’s cut a deal.” Did it surprise you that they moved that fast?
Rob Bonta
No, because we were looking at the context and the timing.
Meta had just lost a major case in Southern California involving an individual plaintiff who was harmed by their product, and then they had just lost a major case in New Mexico.
They had seen a test run where Mr. Zuckerberg was on the stand and the head of Instagram was on the stand. They saw their own documents being made exhibits and their own words and acknowledgments of harm to kids being put in front of them.
A whistleblower from within testified about how they were moving fast and breaking things, and those things being broken were kids’ mental health. They had a chance to see some of the evidence in those other cases.
I thought our case was very strong. We put the whistleblower on the stand first, followed by the president of Instagram. I think they said, “No más. We’ve had enough. We’re ready to settle.”
We weren’t surprised because we were putting enormous pressure on them simply by presenting the facts in court.
Newt Gingrich
The KGM case engaged in an initial wave of discovery that brought to light a whole series of things people didn’t know. To what degree was that a building block toward what you ended up doing?
Rob Bonta
That was an important case.
Oftentimes when attorneys general bring cases, there are also private plaintiffs bringing cases on similar grounds. They’re engaged in the discovery process and moving toward trial. Government bodies can also become involved and hold hearings.
Mr. Zuckerberg testified in Congress. Meta whistleblowers testified in Congress. Together, these events created an ecosystem of important revelations about what Meta was doing, how it was allegedly hurting kids, and allegations that it knew its products, features, and designs were harming kids but continued using them.
The KGM case in Los Angeles was important because an individual sought justice through the court system and revealed significant information about Meta’s conduct.
That was followed by a major win by New Mexico against Meta and then our multistate lawsuit coming right behind it, all within a few months. That created an accountability moment.
The KGM case, the New Mexico case, congressional hearings, and other oversight helped create momentum and context as we brought our case to trial.
Newt Gingrich
I was shocked you were able to get 51 attorneys general to sign up. We only have 50 states.
Rob Bonta
It’s 47 states, the District of Columbia, and three territories.
You don’t see that a lot these days. I think it shows there is still bipartisanship, or nonpartisanship, where people simply want to solve a problem, roll up their sleeves, be pragmatic, help our kids, and hold corporations that break the law accountable.
This was a powerful example of that.
Newt Gingrich
Did it make sense to you that they would settle before putting Zuckerberg on the stand?
Rob Bonta
I think that’s a big moment for them. He’s not afraid to go on the stand. He’s done it before.
But I think it was telling that they settled while the president of Instagram was having a very difficult time with our attorneys on the stand. We had more questions for him.
It was also telling that they settled before Mr. Zuckerberg took the stand.
Newt Gingrich
Young people have become absorbed by these new technologies to the point where I think it’s a serious crisis around the world.
As you were looking at this case, what really struck you about what heavy social media use does to a teenager?
Rob Bonta
One thing I found really moving was that each of the attorneys general involved has an official role, but they’re also moms and dads. They have kids who are on social media.
I’m a dad of three, and many of us have seen firsthand the harm teenagers can experience on social media platforms.
What moved me in making this decision was knowing that I had the authority to stop harm from being visited on young kids who are vulnerable.
That’s a primary role for attorneys general: to step into that breach, stop the powerful from abusing the vulnerable, and make sure we have a society that takes care of our kids.
These platforms have a variety of designs and features built on science and internal data to maximize the duration and frequency of use. They want you on as long as possible.
There are things like endless scroll, autoplay, and ephemeral content that disappears, which makes you want to get on the platform before it disappears because you have FOMO, fear of missing out.
These features have been associated with mental health harms such as anxiety, depression, addictive tendencies, and learning loss.
The headline-grabbing part of the settlement is the $17 billion. That’s a huge number. But what is really the watershed moment is the injunctive relief: the changes in behavior and the need to change these features going forward.
To me, that’s priceless.
Newt Gingrich
I was struck by the things you learned and brought to the surface.
In some ways, it was similar to what we learned about the tobacco companies, where internally, in order to maximize profit, they either ignored or lied about the level of damage they were doing.
You get a similar feeling here that the sheer volume of money was so great that they were prepared to run the risk of having kids hurt themselves if that’s what it cost to get enough eyeballs watching.
Rob Bonta
That’s the similarity to big tobacco.
Another similarity is that, at a time when a lot of people were realizing there was a need to act, we weren’t seeing some of the action from the federal government that we might hope for.
So state attorneys general banded together to hold these big corporations accountable.
It was an issue of public health in both tobacco and Meta. It was this concept of knowing the harm internally, then misleading people externally and doing it anyway because of the monetary incentive.
This very much was a tobacco moment for Meta in the sense that it was revealed what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did having known it.
I’ll also say we are not satisfied with Meta being held accountable when there’s a broader industry that engages in some of the same practices, whether it be YouTube, TikTok, or Snap.
We have lawsuits pending against TikTok. We want changes similar to the ones Meta has committed to in the settlement agreement for the entire industry.
Newt Gingrich
What are the actual changes that will affect young people under the settlement?
Rob Bonta
There are a few very important ones that I think are going to be transformative.
One is time limits on Instagram and Facebook. There will be a two-hour time limit.
We have nighttime and school-time blocks for times when kids should be sleeping and studying instead of scrolling.
There are also blocks on plastic surgery image filters. There are restrictions on likes and interactions on children’s posts, and there’s an opportunity to have a non-algorithmic feed.
The major changes are defaults for children under 18, and they can only be changed by a parent.
Meta talked a lot about safeguards it put in after our litigation commenced, but we considered those safeguards too easy for kids to circumvent.
Now an age-verified, authenticated parent is the only person who can allow a child to have more time on the platform, receive alerts during school or sleep hours, or change certain other default protections.
These are robust, first-of-their-kind changes that will transform the experience for a child on social media platforms.
Newt Gingrich
These systems are enormously sophisticated, but how do they know if the person who wants to use them is under a certain age?
Rob Bonta
Age verification has been an issue of ongoing discussion, but there is technology to authenticate the age and identity of an individual.
During our lawsuit, we alleged that Facebook knowingly had children under 13 participating on its platforms and was collecting and using their data in violation of federal law.
Through the settlement, we required Meta to use its technology and tools so that only verified, authenticated parents can change certain default features for their children.
It’s complicated, but these are very sophisticated companies. If they can keep kids on their platforms for hours on end, they can also verify ages, keep users under 13 off their platforms, and make sure kids under 18 have protections that can only be changed by their parents.
Newt Gingrich
Let’s start with the money. What happens to $17 billion?
Rob Bonta
The $17 billion is for the multistate group.
California will receive around $2 billion, more or less. The California governor and legislature will determine its exact use, but the guardrails require it to be used basically to prevent and mitigate mental health harm to kids on social media platforms, which was the purpose of this lawsuit.
It could go to nonprofits, children’s groups, and mental health organizations so children can receive guidance, education, and help if they need it.
The idea is to drive resources from the settlement into addressing the mental health harms to kids that we alleged were created by Meta.
Newt Gingrich
As I understand it, all of this has to go to a final settlement, which then has to be accepted by the courts.
Rob Bonta
Yes. That has happened.
In the middle of trial, we came forward to the court with what we call a consent decree, stipulation, and judgment requiring court approval, and the court signed on.
An important point is that we have an independent monitor or auditor who will review and report compliance or noncompliance by Meta with the terms of the settlement.
We will also have ongoing court jurisdiction where we can go into court and enforce the terms of this agreement should Meta not comply with them.
We expect Meta to comply, but we have a backstop of enforcement if necessary.
Newt Gingrich
Do you see this moving to TikTok and others? Having looked at what just happened, do you expect them to be easier to negotiate with?
Rob Bonta
I think this is a blueprint. There’s now clarity and transparency for the rest of the industry, including TikTok, YouTube, and Snap, about what the coalition of attorneys general wants to see.
Some can do it in a more collaborative way, and some might require us to go to court.
I hope, for the sake of our children, the rest of the industry will come into compliance quickly.
We’re already in advanced litigation with TikTok, and maybe we can get to a resolution with them similar to the terms with Meta, but that’s up to them.
There are also components built into the settlement that make the terms stronger if the rest of the industry agrees to similar terms.
For example, the time limit goes from two hours to one hour if the whole industry commits. The nighttime and school-time blocks also have extended hours if the rest of the industry commits to similar terms.
We’re committed to pursuing similar terms with the rest of the industry. They will have to decide whether they do it quickly and collaboratively or whether we have to fight it out in court.
Newt Gingrich
You’ve been very busy. You’ve taken on big oil, the housing crisis, and big tech. Do you have other major projects you’re planning for the near future?
Rob Bonta
We’re doing a lot in the antitrust space involving major mergers that could increase market concentration, reduce competition, or create monopoly concerns.
Attorneys general are well positioned to take on big entities that abuse their power.
Being big in itself isn’t problematic. But if you’re using that size and power to break the law and harm everyday people, attorneys general are uniquely situated to step in, stop unlawful conduct, and prevent that harm.
Newt Gingrich
It’s always intrigued me that the American system has had this deep bias against unregulated power. It goes all the way back to the railroads, Standard Oil, and AT&T.
It means attorneys general in the United States have a much more interventionist and, in some ways, confrontational role than you might have in other countries.
When you ran for Attorney General, did you see it as a position you could use to take on systems that weren’t being taken on by others?
Rob Bonta
When I was running for Attorney General and thinking about the role, I was thinking about everyday people in California and their struggles.
I wanted them to know they had an attorney general by their side.
In my early days, a lot of that was about public safety. We had organized retail crime, fentanyl overdoses, and human trafficking.
I thought about the grieving parent and the store owner. I wanted them to know there would be rules that would be enforced and that they would have an attorney general who fights for them.
As I’ve been in the role, I’ve seen some big, powerful entities abuse that power. They can be wildly successful without breaking the law. They can create a service or product, innovate, and use their business acumen.
But when you cross the line, break the law, and hurt people, that’s where I’ll be.
We’ve seen what can happen with unregulated entities. We saw it with tobacco, opioids, and lead paint. We’ve seen thresholds get crossed and people get hurt.
We’re not here to be anti-business. I like to say I’m pro-business, pro-law, and pro-businesses that follow the law.
We want businesses to be wildly successful while following the law. But we have rules of the road, and we’re going to enforce those laws firmly and fairly, without fear or favor.
Newt Gingrich
For those of us who aren’t lawyers, this has been a fascinating conversation.
What you achieved is pretty remarkable, and I suspect it has set up a series of additional actions in the near future.
Thank you for joining me and walking us through what this settlement actually means for families.
I commend you for coordinating in a bipartisan way with so many attorneys general from across the country and pursuing this effort. I’m very grateful that you could take the time to be with me today and help me understand it.
Rob Bonta
It’s my pleasure and my honor. Great to be with you. Thank you for your very kind words. I really enjoyed our time together. Thanks for having me.
About the Guest
Rob Bonta is the 34th Attorney General of California and the first person of Filipino descent to hold the office. He previously served for more than eight years in the California State Assembly and earlier worked as a deputy city attorney in San Francisco. As Attorney General, Bonta has been involved in litigation and enforcement efforts involving consumer protection, technology, antitrust, housing, public safety, and other issues.
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