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In the aftermath of Meta‘s recent $17 billion settlement, the culmination of a litigious debate over its alleged role in social media addiction and youth mental health, all attention was on the platform’s promises.
As part of the settlement, Meta said it would invest further in what many are now referring to as industry-leading app guardrails. The company would also deliver a precedent-setting $12 billion payment to state attorneys general. Another $5 billion will be added if Snap, TikTok, and YouTube agree to implement their own safeguards. Many honed in the specific platform changes included in the agreement — including greater age assurance and stronger time limits — and the potential downstream effect Meta’s changes could levy on its competitors.
But others, including a group of survivor parents, perked up at a different, less flashy promise.
“I think legislation would have been the best answer to this issue,” an unnamed Meta official told reporters during a press call following the settlement. The official went on, alluding to recent attempts to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA): “It would be better to have this done by a legislature, which can immediately bind all of our competitors to the same rules.”
The comment was a shock to folks working behind the scenes to advance tech regulation, including Maurine Molak, an advocate and co-founder of Parents for Safe Online Spaces (ParentsSOS). The organization has been fighting for years to pass child safety legislation like KOSA despite Big Tech’s roadblocks. Molak was in the room during Meta’s 2024 congressional hearing, at which Zuckerberg apologized to a group of families, including Molak, whose children had died by suicide.
“I was livid,” Molak told Mashable. “For them to come out and act like KOSA was the answer to these issues after knowing the millions of dollars they spent lobbying against [it]? I was incensed.”
The Meta official implied that the time had passed for Congress to advance the bill during this session, which infuriated Molak in particular. “Who makes Meta the overseer of Congress’ calendar?” she asked. Molak helped pass Texas’ anti-cyberbullying legislation, David’s Law, in 2017, in honor of her son.
“This deal is designed to lead us to basically the same place,” the Meta official said, likening the stipulations of the settlement to the protections outlined in bills like KOSA.
The sentiment was a nail in the coffin for ParentsSOS.
“It is morally bankrupt to suggest the settlement is the same thing as [legislation],” said ParentsSOS member Chris McComas, mother of Grace McComas, who died by suicide following intense cyberbullying in 2012. McComas said the company’s press release read like PR spin, not an acknowledgment of guilt. “It shouldn’t be seen as a good guys trying to do the right thing. They are in trouble. They see the writing on the wall, and they are trying to save themselves.”
So the parents penned a letter.
He needs to put his money behind his words.
Calling on Zuckerberg to back the bill
“Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,” the letter begins, addressed directly to the Meta CEO and dated Aug. 28, 2026. “We read, with great interest, your open letter to TikTok and YouTube calling for industry standards to protect kids online in the wake of your company’s settlement with the state Attorneys General. We wholeheartedly agree with you…”
The letter was sent just two days after the comments were made by the unnamed Meta official, but nearly a month after a neutered version of KOSA was passed by the House as the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. It still needs to be voted on by the Senate.
“Fortunately there is still time to pass this life-saving legislation this Congress,” the group wrote. “Given your recently changed views on needing federal legislation to prevent online harms within the industry, will you stop lobbying against KOSA; publicly pledge your support for the bill; and share your support with President Trump and leaders in Congress?”
The letter was strategic, both McComas and Molak told Mashable. On one hand, it takes Meta’s comments at face value and extends an olive branch to the company, which has so far been the main opposition to ParentsSOS’s advocacy efforts, they say.
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On the other hand, it calls out what Molak referred to as a “brazen” implication that Meta was cleaning up an industry rife with ne’er-do-wells. “We know what kind of person Zuckerberg is,” said Molak. “We needed to shame him into helping us pass KOSA. He needs to put his money behind his words.”
The response, as of this story’s publishing, has been silence. Neither Molak nor McComas expressed surprise that Meta would drag its feet on pushing for legislation publicly.
Mashable also reached out to Meta regarding the letter prior to publication. The company declined to comment, directing the publication to Meta’s previous newsroom post.
What is KOSA?
ParentsSOS has been pounding the pavement around Capitol Hill to pass KOSA, a piece of federal legislation that has become synonymous with cases surrounding teen mental health, social media addiction, and suicide.
In a simple reading, KOSA would mandate default safeguards for underage internet users, including parental controls, communication limits, and location privacy, as well as design features like the ability to turn off infinite scroll, autoplay, and other incentives to stay online. The bill also requires the Secretary of Commerce, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Trade Commission evaluate the efficacy of age verification systems at the “device or operating system level.”
ParentsSOS, which calls KOSA “a wildly popular bipartisan bill” in the letter, says Meta may be using KOSA as protection from further litigation. In fact, Meta has recently shifted its stance and begun working with, rather against, regulatory proponents — conversations aimed at carving out specific protections to avoid astronomical fines for violating said law, company insiders recently told Politico.
We needed to shame him into helping us pass KOSA.
“[KOSA] can’t happen for immunity,” said McComas. “It needs to happen for the lives of American children and families that are forever torn apart when one of them is lost.”
Many other organizations have backed the bill, including the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). “The Kids Online Safety Act with its strong Duty of Care would compel Meta and other tech platforms to design their products with children in mind and Congress should pass this quickly,” said NCOSE leadership in the wake of the settlement.
Enough is Enough, an internet safety nonprofit that helped pass the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in 2000, also called on the Senate to pass KOSA, noting its “strong Duty of Care” provisions that they argue could deliver needed protections. “Hopefully, this settlement will end the lobbying to protect Big Tech and instead focus on protecting kids,” the organization wrote.
Parent rights advocacy group ParentsTogether has previously backed KOSA and called for additional Senate inquiries into Big Tech following the settlement decision. “As Congress advances federal online safety legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act, we urge lawmakers to set strong, clear standards for every platform while preserving states’ and families’ ability to sue,” the nonprofit wrote. “Federal law can raise the floor nationwide; access to the courts is what keeps companies honest in between. Our children deserve both.”
There’s other legislation on the table, too, many of which are looped into the larger KIDS Act. For example, Enough is Enough also called on Meta to back the federal App Store Accountability Act, a federal version of laws recently passed by states like Texas which mandate stricter age verification and parental controls for app marketplaces. Meta has previously called on regulation of marketplaces rather than stipulations on platforms themselves.
Organizations pushing KOSA are up against a massive lobbying machine backed by Big Tech. According to an analysis of lobbying disclosures by campaign finance reform nonprofit Issue One, companies have spent a combined $226,000 per day pushing back on legislation in 2026. The numbers have escalated as AI companies have gained a hold in federal policymaking.
“When Meta says ‘industry wide standards,’ that means they know they will lobby to enact a very weak set of safeguards. But now, it must [be] clear to all, that Meta can never be trusted when it comes to protecting and supporting young people,” Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told Mashable. “We need more litigation, a push for strong state laws, and a major D.C. push for national policy that finally reins in Meta, Google, and the other industry leaders.”
Why is KOSA controversial?
Online safety regulation isn’t just swimming against the tide of Big Tech money. KOSA has proven to be a highly divisive bill among digital privacy advocates since its initial introduction in 2022.
Critics have warned the bill — and related online safety legislation — could be opening up a Pandora’s Box of First Amendment violations. Responding to early versions of KOSA, critics noted language that could serve as a backdoor for internet-wide censorship, including posts featuring LGBTQ content, and have expressed doubt over controversial age verification systems.
KOSA’s Duty of Care stipulations, which critics argue could lead platforms to over-censor protected speech to shield themselves from the law, have previously been called into question by groups like the ACLU, GLAAD, and the Internet Society. A group of 90+ civil society organizations signed onto a 2022 letter opposing early versions of KOSA. Critics have continued to push back against the constitutionality of the bill and related legislative attempts like the App Store Accountability Act.
Much like child safety groups, privacy groups warned the settlement could provide momentum to pass the long-awaited regulation. But the settlement itself also poses concern.
Deep in the terms of Meta’s settlement was a minor legal loophole, effectively granting the company permission to retain and use children’s data for training age assurance models and designing guardrails. The agreement bars states who signed on from suing the company under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which is the basis for many ongoing claims.
“Under this settlement, young users will now have less access to Meta products, and a lesser ability to exercise their rights to speak, access information and art and culture, associate and form communities, and play,” wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The settlement also embeds age assurance into every product, mandating the collection of even more personal information from users of all ages; this enshrines Meta’s harmful surveillance into law.”
In an Aug. 26 statement, the Center for Democracy & Technology warned the settlement’s age assurance promises could pose potential risks to privacy and free expression rights online. “Given the well-documented risks age assurance techniques pose to all users’ rights to access the web privately, securely, and anonymously, this commitment raises significant concerns and its implementation must be closely observed,” the organization wrote.
Despite these criticisms — which McComas describes as red herrings seeded by Big Tech itself — KOSA is still viewed by proponents as the only solution to what has become one of the most pressing issues of our time. “I believe it will start saving lives right away,” said McComas.
