Every remedy in Meta's settlement — daily limits by default, age assurance, new parental tools — is a setting, and Ben Moore says none of them touches the thing that keeps people scrolling.
The rest of the industry read the settlement as a legal event. Moore read it as confirmation that the product itself is the liability, and said the only change that would work is one Meta will not make, because it is the one that costs advertising revenue.
"And there's only one way. It's by changing the architecture of the platform which should be definitely limiting the feed"
Moore runs BeReal in the United States, a platform that has held a Gen Z audience for five years with no algorithm, no filters and a feed that stops — so he is describing a product that already works the way he says Meta's should.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Ben Moore, US managing director of BeReal, the photo-sharing app that runs with no algorithm, no filters and a feed that ends
🎙️ Host: Akash Pasricha, who anchors TITV, The Information's live weekday show at 10 a.m. Pacific
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on YouTube (The Information)
🔴 YouTube | ⏱️ 10 min
Key Takeaways
Nobody in the industry was surprised, and Moore says the platforms knew what they were doing
Optimizing for time spent is now a known legal liability, not just a product choice
The agreed remedies are settings Meta could have shipped years ago
His verdict on whether they go far enough was two words
The fix he names is a feed with an end, which is a change to the architecture
BeReal runs with no algorithm and he says it is not a problem
What stops Meta doing it is advertising revenue, and he says so plainly
YouTube and TikTok are a different case because people go there to watch things
Instagram spent 15 years optimizing for vanity metrics that creators chase
AI-generated content is the next version of this problem, and users cannot spot it
BeReal blocks uploads from the camera roll, so everything on it was captured in the app
1. Meta had it coming
Pasricha asked for Moore's reaction to the previous week's settlement before turning to BeReal itself.
He said the market had priced it in. "Not really a big surprise to be honest. I think the market has been really feeling it coming for the past few months now."
His framing of what the case was really about was blunt. "Everybody knows that social media has no longer been social for over a decade and I guess they had it coming."
He treated it as a warning shot at everyone else. "So it's more of a wakeup call for the rest of the industry." Platforms that optimize for time spent now know that doing so carries legal liability, and he said teens, parents and most users want the change
The remedies on the table, as the segment laid them out, are default daily limits, age assurance and new tools for parents, with the industry waiting to see which other platforms agree to the same terms
2. The remedies are too small
Asked whether the changes go far enough, Moore did not hedge. "No, absolutely not."
He allowed they could help limit how long teenagers spend scrolling, and said that is not the same as being enough
His benchmark is the product Facebook launched with. "I think when Facebook came out they had a limited feed they had no algorithm and they were essentially being used as a real social network." People checked on friends and family and then went back to their lives
The reason the settlement terms do not impress him is that they were always available. "I think those remedies are just you know product specs that they could have implemented a long time ago."
What he wants is a physical limit rather than a nudge. "I think there needs to be a real change a change that can actually limit the ability for people to physically limit their amount of time scrolling through their feeds."
3. Give the feed an ending
Pasricha asked whether he was really proposing changing the algorithm.
He was, and named the alternative from his own product. "I'm suggesting changing the algorithm removing it if possible on BeReal there's no algorithm and it's not a problem."
He also named the reason it will not happen. "But we know that the impact for Meta will be about their advertising revenue if they do so. So that's really what's at stake here."
Pressed for something short of removing the algorithm, he gave a mechanism instead of a control. "By a very simple way of doing it by adding a finite feed I think that's really the real remedy here, the real solution"
The feed ends once a user has checked on their friends, and a hand-off message tells them to go back to their real life
The BeReal design he is describing has not changed in five years. "Yeah, that's what's made BeReal such a success for Gen Z for the past 5 years now."
"One notification one moment to share you know your real moment of your life and then a feed that ends no algorithm pushing content from stranger no control and no filters"
4. TikTok and YouTube differ
Pasricha noted that Meta had turned a lawsuit into a leadership message, encouraging other platforms to follow, and asked whether TikTok and YouTube will.
Moore split the question into should and will. "I think they should." Asked directly whether they will, he said he thinks they will, and pointed to the open letter Meta sent the other platforms the previous week
He does not think the platforms are the same business. "I think they're different though. They've always been a entertaining company."
"People are going on YouTube and TikTok to actually consume content." On Meta and Instagram people came to connect with friends and now consume content the same way
His charge against Instagram is that it optimized for two things at once, time spent and vanity metrics, over fifteen years
The mechanism: "Like algorithm pushing you know content from strangers that keeps the user scrolling forever."
"Optimizing for the level of views, the level of likes, the reshares, all of those metrics, those KPIs that are so important for content creators have been really addicting to them and that's I think the source of the problem as well."
5. AI slop is the next suit
Pasricha asked what the social media case means for AI, and whether similar lawsuits are coming.
Moore put machine-generated content at the top of the list of unaddressed problems, saying it has been flooding feeds for roughly a year and a half
The specific harm is that readers cannot tell. He said most social media users cannot distinguish a post generated by AI from one written by a person
His conclusion was a direct answer to his own question. "Can social media be trusted as it is today? The answer is no."
BeReal's answer is a product constraint rather than a label. "I think on BeReal we have one solution that really solves for that is the ability for users to actually not upload any content from their camera roll."
"Everything on our platform is being taken captured within the app." Asked whether he would prefer watermarks, he pointed to this instead
The effect he claims is that a BeReal user never has to wonder whether what they are looking at is real
6. Why Meta paid to move on
Pasricha said he had spent the weekend trying to work out why Meta settled at all, given the case would have run for a long time and the money was a fraction of what was sought.
Moore agreed with the premise and put a number on the scale of it. "It's just a check for them and I think it's barely 10% of what they make every year."
His explanation was operational rather than legal. "They wanted to get away from the noise and focus on their next product road map their next updates and they want to move away from any litigation so that people don't really point the finger at them."
Bonus Insights
The show had not covered BeReal before, and Pasricha said so when introducing the segment
Moore's account of what BeReal is has not moved in five years, which he presented as the point: one notification a day, one moment, both cameras, no filters
Meta's open letter to the other platforms, sent the week before, is the reason he expects TikTok and YouTube to follow rather than any regulatory pressure
This was the fourth of five interviews in one episode; the other four are written up separately
Moore's bottom line is that the settlement changed the settings and not the product: as long as the feed is infinite and the algorithm is pulling in content from strangers, the incentive that produced the lawsuit is still there, and the only company that has removed it is one whose business does not depend on advertising against an endless scroll.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
BeReal (His company: one notification a day, both cameras, no algorithm, no filters, and a feed that ends — the design he says Meta should copy)
Meta, Facebook and Instagram (The settlement that opens the segment; he says Facebook launched with the finite feed he now wants back, and that Instagram has optimized for vanity metrics for fifteen years)
TikTok and YouTube (The platforms he expects to follow Meta's terms, though he argues they are entertainment products rather than social ones)
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