Meta is stepping up its public campaign against TikTok and YouTube, placing full-page ads in major United States newspapers urging the platforms to adopt stronger measures to protect teenagers on social media.

It was earlier reported that Meta reached a landmark settlement worth as much as $18 billion with US states, requiring the company to introduce new safety measures on Instagram and Facebook, including limits on the amount of time teenagers can spend on the platforms.

In an unusual condition, however, Meta will pay only part of the settlement if rival platforms fail to make similar commitments.

The agreement requires competitors to adopt comparable safety measures, accept potential fines and make other concessions on their platforms.

“We want to ensure teens benefit from this new industry standard, but we cannot do it alone,” according to the ads. “These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers – TikTok and YouTube – to put the same measures in place.”

TikTok and YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, are facing multiple similar lawsuits as part of a broader wave of litigation over allegations that social media platforms contribute to addiction among minors.

The arrangement is intended to drive industry-wide reforms, based on Meta’s argument that imposing restrictions on teenagers only on Instagram could simply lead them to shift their attention to competing social media platforms.

The advertisements began appearing on Thursday and Friday and will continue throughout the weekend in the national editions of major US newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

Meta, then known as Facebook, used a similar public-relations strategy in 2018 following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which involved the harvesting of data from tens of millions of Facebook users for political targeting during the 2016 US presidential election.