Mike Moore, the former Mississippi attorney general who helped negotiate the landmark $246 billion tobacco master settlement in 1998, says the recent state settlement with Meta is a promising first step — but he warns that replicating the tobacco playbook for social media will be far more complex.
Meta this week agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle lawsuits brought by a coalition of state attorneys general, who accused the company of misrepresenting the harm its platforms cause to children’s mental health. It’s the largest deal yet in the wave of litigation targeting social media firms, but experts say it’s far from the last word.
More than a one-company fix
Moore, who now co-leads the newly created nonprofit Attention Initiative, told CNBC that he sees an opportunity for a grand settlement covering a wider range of companies and including lasting remedies, such as a permanent national public education fund. His goal, he said, is to “reduce the number of young people who fall prey to the addiction and the many harms it has caused.”
The Meta agreement includes daily usage limits and “nighttime blocks” for teenagers, enhanced age assurance measures, and additional parental tools. An independent auditor will monitor compliance over five years.
“The settlement with the states is a great first step in helping protect our children from the dangers on social media,” Moore said in his first public comments on the deal. “The attorneys general have done a great job with their investigations and lawsuits in exposing the bad practices of Meta and the social media industry and now providing a template of corrective actions the industry must take.”
Tech’s evolving landscape complicates a tobacco-style deal
While Moore sees clear parallels to the fight against Big Tobacco, the nature of technology itself may limit how far that comparison holds. Unlike cigarettes — a static product — social media and AI are constantly evolving, and the line between harmful addiction and social benefit is blurry.
“Cigarettes are cigarettes,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. By contrast, there are stark differences between apps like Facebook and TikTok, and “in the world of AI and social media, it is simply impossible to know what those technologies are going to be doing for good and ill five and 10 and 15 years into the future,” he said.
Caulkins said he is not convinced that a “single settlement” can resolve all the health-related concerns, given the pace of technological change.
Still, Moore stressed the importance of crafting proposed settlement language now to ensure litigators target the most significant fixes — including a public education fund, which he believes works best on a national scale rather than “piece by piece, city by city, county by county, state by state.”
States signal more to come
The Meta settlement came just over a week into a federal trial in Oakland, California, co-led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. The 2023 lawsuit accused Meta of violating federal and state laws, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
After the deal, Bonta called it “a floor conceptually, not a ceiling,” adding, “It gives notice to others in the industry that we’re not done, and we expect similar outcomes from them as well.”
Meta has not commented on whether a larger settlement is in the works. In its statement, the company noted that part of its payout is contingent on YouTube and TikTok implementing similar changes. Google and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment; Snap, which also faces lawsuits, declined to comment.
An emerging push from a new generation
The Attention Initiative was created by 22-year-old Josh Jacobs, who modeled the Colorado nonprofit in part after the Truth Initiative, the public health group funded by the tobacco settlement. Jacobs previously co-founded an online ad startup and grew disillusioned with what he called social media’s “perverse incentives of maximizing for engagement over all else.”
Jacobs said he sees widespread cynicism among his peers: “Most people my age aren’t following this trial through the news. They’re seeing it on social media, and the comments under those posts are almost entirely cynical. The assumption is that nothing will change.”
Not everyone in the tech world welcomes aggressive regulation. Allison Ball, a former Facebook product leader and now a venture capitalist, said she admires the work of Jacobs and Moore but wants them to stay “maniacally focused on what could actually help” and to avoid regulations with unintended consequences. “It’s the hardest thing in modern society to get right,” she said. “Where to limit freedoms and who to hold accountable, that’s super difficult for the government to get right.”
Litigation continues
Lawyers Joe Rice and Steve Berman, both key architects of the tobacco settlement, see more legal battles ahead. Berman speculates that Meta will next settle the school districts case, which involves some 1,200 districts accusing the company and others of spreading intentionally addictive features. “They’re going to have to take care of this problem, or they’re just going to be litigated forever,” he said.
Rice said a master settlement would require the tech giants to cooperate in a way that is unfamiliar to them. “At some point in time, it’s possible that the two or three largest platforms can say, ‘Look, we should all agree to this,'” he said. “They’re not in lockstep right now.”
Moore said he has initiated potential master settlement language with attorneys general but declined to elaborate. He is enlisting colleagues at the Truth Initiative to work with Jacobs and AG offices.
Meanwhile, court cases remain on the calendar, including a Snap case in New Mexico led by Attorney General Raul Torrez, who is also a Truth Initiative board member. That trial is scheduled for about a year from now.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/30/mike-moore-ag-social-media-settlement-big-tobacco.html
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