Also, by settling, Meta avoided what Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom had warned a loss would produce: a blueprint that could hand states, schools and private plaintiffs a roadmap for future litigation. The central product question — whether engineering an algorithmically compelling platform while concealing known harms constitutes a defective product under consumer protection law — remains unanswered. That’s good for Meta’s stock price, but it leaves companies in adjacent industries or with similarly engagement-driven products (like, say, AI) without a definitive answer they might wish to have.