Meta’s August deal adds $5.3bn if YouTube and TikTok follow suit
In an interview at Snap’s California headquarters, Spiegel described a default time limit for teens as “a really good example of something that we’d be willing to implement” and called setting such limits “an important step forward for the industry.” He did not commit to a timeline, telling the BBC, “That’s something we’ve talked about internally. I don’t have more to share today.” Spiegel said the company had “looked really thoughtfully at the terms” of Meta’s settlement and that identifying industry norms “would be beneficial overall.”
Meta agreed in August to pay $12.7bn and to implement a default two-hour daily limit for teen users across its platforms, alongside muted notifications during school hours, nighttime blocks, and other measures. Under the deal, the company said it would implement even more stringent time limits and pay an additional $5.3bn if YouTube and TikTok adopt matching measures. Meta has denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which will be paid over a 10-year period.
The settlement resolved allegations from most US state attorneys general that Meta’s apps were deliberately designed to be addictive to young users. Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap have all faced litigation alleging their platforms helped spawn a youth mental health crisis. Snap has additionally faced separate allegations that it facilitated illegal drug sales.
A Meta spokesperson said last month the company was hopeful Snap would make similar platform changes. YouTube-parent Google said it had no comment when asked if it planned to implement Meta’s settlement measures. TikTok did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Spiegel pointed to Snap’s Family Center feature, which allows parents to track aspects of how their teens use Snapchat, and said the company “want[s] to figure out how we can be part of the solution.”
The interview coincided with Snap’s announcement of new features for its upcoming Specs smart glasses, which the company said could connect to Apple iPhone and Mac devices. Spiegel said the smart eyewear would use AI to suggest things for people to do based on what the tech learns about their goals, relationships and routines. “Rather than the way that people use chatbots today where you constantly have to ask for stuff, Specs can understand what’s important to you, and then offer recommendations or offer next steps,” he said. Like other smart glasses, the device will use AI to let people see digital elements overlaid onto the world.
Specs will retail at $2,195 in the US and £1,995 in the UK and weigh approximately 130 grams, Snap said. The firm says the device can offer live translation across 60 languages and be used for various tasks, including streaming video. “The target audience right now is early adopters of tech and developers as well as enterprise,” Spiegel said.
Snap is positioning Specs between virtual reality headsets such as Meta’s Quest 3 and lightweight AI smart glasses from rivals, which Snap described as looking more like conventional glasses. “We’re creating a totally new category here,” Spiegel said. “You have a really powerful computer that brings a lot of the immersive capability you see with VR, but they’re also lightweight at just about 130 grams, so they’re very wearable and they have these see-through lenses, so you can use them out in the world.”
Specs is Snap’s most recent foray into wearable tech, coming a decade after its short-lived Spectacles cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
Specs arrives as Meta faces backlash over its own smart glasses, which are estimated to be the most popular on the market. Some online have derisively called them “pervert glasses” over how they have been used to secretly film women, with one person telling the BBC they were filmed leaving the beach, while another said they were told to pay to remove a video of them from the internet. Meta said it has sold seven million pairs of its smart glasses, despite the controversy.
Snap said Specs do not use facial recognition and include a white indicator light at the top of the frame that flashes when the device is recording video or taking a photo, to alert people nearby. Meta glasses users have figured out ways to obscure components meant to indicate that a photo or video is being captured, including by tampering with the electronics in the device. Meta says it has remotely disabled cameras on thousands of devices on which tampering or destruction of the indicator light was detected.