Instagram Head Adam Mosseri Begins Testimony At Meta Child Social Media Addiction Trial

Filed 14h ago · Via HuffPost · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Miguel Discart & Kiri Karma · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head since 2018, testified in Oakland federal court that only a low single-digit percentage of teenagers used the 'Take a Break' feature before it became default in September 2024, nearly three years after launch.

Twenty-nine states are suing Meta, alleging the company designed Instagram and Facebook to addict children, with four states citing links to anxiety, depression and suicide while accusing Meta of misleading consumers about safety. States are seeking penalties that could approach $200 billion.

A separate Instagram design director testified that a 2023 presentation slide showing teens saw 1.5 times more bullying, suicide, hate, nudity and violent content than adults had its data removed, though a Meta attorney later drew out testimony placing the figure on a different slide.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

There is something clarifying about a defense that boils down to: we built the seatbelt, we left it in the trunk for three years, and then we noticed nobody was wearing it. The most damning testimony in any product-safety case is always the internal slide deck, which is why the modern corporate art form is the slide that survives while its data quietly does not. Twenty-nine attorneys general later, the company's position remains that the users chose this — a defense that works better when the users are old enough to sign a contract.

Source: Read the original at HuffPost → Scored: Virtutes Instrumenti · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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