Judge Gonzalez Rogers approves the settlement, and the "not yet final" flag on yesterday's entry comes off

What happened

The Oakland settlement logged yesterday is now approved, and Meta has published its own account of the terms. ⚠️ This is the same agreement as the 08-26 entry below, not a second one — the ~$17bn payment and the injunctive product terms were both logged then, with that entry explicitly flagging that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had only received the document and it was not yet final. That is what changed: it is final. Meta's own post carries an "Updated on August 27, 2026 at 10:30 AM PT to reflect the judge's approval" stamp.
What Meta's own account adds beyond the AG press release: the protections apply automatically to under-18 accounts in participating jurisdictions rather than on opt-in; the two-hour daily limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram and counted across multiple accounts where Meta detects them; Night Mode blocks midnight to 6am across Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels; School Mode mutes notifications 8am-3pm; prompts fire every 15 minutes of continuous use and at 60 and 90 minutes cumulative; the non-algorithmic feed is selectable by the teen and parents can set it as required; and cosmetic-surgery and extreme-makeup filters are disabled. Meta simultaneously published an open letter urging TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same standard, arguing teens migrate when restricted on one app.
⚠️ The coalition size is reported two ways and neither is adopted here as the number. California's AG put it at 51 ("all 50 states plus D.C. and U.S. territories"); Meta's own post body says 52 across "US states, territories, and the District of Columbia", while Meta's own newsroom index card still says 51. Same coalition, counted differently, and the discrepancy sits inside a single publisher's own site.
Why the approval matters to this thread and not just to the docket: a settlement received is a proposal; a settlement approved is a ten-year, jurisdiction-split, named-population design change that can actually be measured. That is the natural experiment this thread has wanted — the causality literature has never been able to run one, and policy has now run it. (Meta Newsroom, the open letter)

Sources 2

Meta Newsroom about.fb.com primary source
the open letter about.fb.com primary source

Credibility ratings combine two public datasets: Lin et al. 2023, PNAS Nexus 2(9):pgad286 (CC BY 4.0) for the domain-quality score, and Wikipedia's perennial-sources list (CC BY-SA 4.0) for the reliability tier. A rating describes an outlet's general record, never this particular article. Unrated means absent from those datasets — not a judgement.

The wider story

This event sits inside Social Media Fight, which carries how it developed before and since.

Story 12 of 14 in this thread's timeline, oldest to newest

Adjacent threads (shared entities):

· Hyperscaler Capex

· Meta Capex

· Where the Capex Lands

· Nvidia's Order Book

· CSAM Ads