Instagram exec testifies ‘no silver bullet’ for Meta’s teen safety features

Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified Tuesday in the trial of four states against Meta, denying knowledge that staff withheld internal teen-usage data from him to limit litigation exposure. He said there's ‘no silver bullet’ for teen safety and that Meta's data is vouched for at ‘the highest level of rigor.’

Testimony also covered the ‘take a break’ feature, used by just 1.8% of eligible teens before Meta made it a default on teen accounts launched in October 2024 — after the states' lawsuit was already filed. Internal chats shown in court suggested employees stripped harmful-content statistics from leadership presentations specifically to avoid creating a ‘paper trail’ for litigation, though a product director testified he never hid data from leadership.

A former data scientist said the ‘well-being’ team existed partly to protect the company from future lawsuits, and that low adoption of safety tools was ‘disappointing.’ The states allege violations of children's privacy law and consumer protection statutes; penalties could reach $200 billion if Meta is found liable, with Zuckerberg expected to testify later in the trial.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.