Meta and D.C. AG describe a youth-safety settlement in different dollars; Meta flags a Q3 legal accrual outside July expense guidance

Meta Platforms, Inc. said it reached a bipartisan agreement with 52 attorneys general across U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia on protections for under-18s on Instagram and Facebook. The Meta Newsroom post, fetched August 26, 2026 at 6:58 p.m. ET, does not print a calendar date string; the URL path is /2026/08/. The same day, the D.C. Office of the Attorney General published a release dated August 26, 2026 describing a multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc.

The two official pages do not use the same dollar construction, the same participant count, or the same trigger for the contingent tranche. Meta described a payment of approximately $18 billion over 10 years, with approximately 70% (approximately $12.7 billion) allocated and the remaining 30% (approximately $5.3 billion) contingent. The D.C. OAG said Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion over ten years and an additional $5 billion, “increasingly the total settlement amount to $17.1 billion,” if other major social media companies adopt the features. Meta also said it expects to accrue a legal expense of approximately $10 billion in Q3’26 that was not in the July/Q2 expense range. Product terms are pending judicial approval. No same-day Meta 8-K on this agreement was found.

Pending judicial approval, Meta said, the protections and controls will automatically apply to under-18s on Instagram and Facebook in participating U.S. states and territories. Meta said the majority of the terms are required to remain in place for 10 years. Neither primary page states that a court has approved the agreement. Neither page says Meta admitted liability or wrongdoing. This page reports both official wordings and does not average, net, or pick one.

Meta’s Newsroom page does not state a $12.1 billion floor, a $17.1 billion ceiling, or a District of Columbia recovery range. The D.C. OAG page does not state Meta’s approximately $18 billion figure, the approximately $12.7 billion / approximately $5.3 billion split, or a Q3 legal-expense accrual. The District, the OAG said, will receive at least $90,395,940 and up to $129,356,762. The OAG said the agreement resolves claims by 51 states and territories and called it the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside of the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. Meta’s only accrual string is an approximately $10 billion Q3’26 legal expense that was not contemplated in the Q2-call expense range, with other July guidance ranges left unchanged. Neither page explains how that accrual maps to the payment language.

Product-term and contingent-trigger language also differ. Meta described a default two-hour daily time limit, Night Mode from midnight to 6 a.m., School Mode mute from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and prompts at 15, 60, and 90 minutes, with the remaining 30% payment tied to YouTube and TikTok adopting specified features and making matching payments. The OAG described a combined two-hour daily limit, nighttime blocks from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. plus notification silencing from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., and a tighter 60-minute limit if Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms. A same-day Meta 8-K on this agreement was not found in the live EDGAR submissions index for CIK 0001326801 as of 6:58 p.m. ET; the most recent Form 8-K in that recent list had filingDate 2026-07-29.