Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top brass at the social media giant were well aware that millions of users on Instagram are underage, according to claims recently published in a lawsuit filed by dozens of states over the alleged misconduct. to protect teenagers from harm by the company.
The details were included in an unredacted complaint filed late last week by 33 states, including New York. The lawsuit, originally filed in October, alleges that the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp “ignored the great harm” it caused young users by implementing addictive features designed to keep them hooked on the apps.
“Within the company, Meta’s actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret that is routinely documented, rigorously analyzed and confirmed, and jealously protected from public disclosure. “the lawsuit alleges.
Instagram’s parent company received “more than 1.1 million reports from users under the age of 13 on Instagram” through in-app reporting systems alone from the first quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2023,” the company alleges. complaint.
However, the company “deactivated only a fraction of those accounts” and “routinely continued to collect data from children without parental consent,” the lawsuit alleges. Meta’s actions allegedly violated a federal law that blocks the collection of personal data from users under 13 years of age.
The unredacted version of the lawsuit also shed new light on Meta’s internal response to whistleblower allegations from former employee Frances Haugen, who testified on Capitol Hill in 2021 that Zuckerberg’s company prioritized profits over user safety. even though an internal investigation showed their platforms were causing damage.
Haugen’s accusations were first reported in a Extensive Wall Street Journal investigation in 2021, which partly revealed that Meta executives knew that Instagram was particularly toxic for teenage girls, some of whom developed body image issues, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts.
The lawsuit cites messages from Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri in which she noted that the Journal’s “arguments” [are] based on our own research [they] are difficult to refute” and that she was “mostly concerned about the consequences of the article. . . [and] that our own research confirmed what everyone had suspected for a long time[.]”
In an internal chat from November 2021, Mosseri allegedly wrote, “tweens want access to Instagram and are lying about their age to get it now.” State attorneys general argue this is one of many signs that Meta employees knew about the problem with underage users.
However, a month later, Mosseri told members of the Senate during a highly publicized hearing that children under 13 were “not allowed on Instagram.”
The lawsuit claims that a March 2021 company investigation revealed that Instagram’s recommendation algorithm “was shown to recommend content related to eating disorders when it received indications that the user had interacted with content related to eating disorders in the past.”
Meta employees created test accounts in which they followed profiles with names suggestive of eating disorders. Shortly after, the algorithm suggested “anorexia-related accounts, such as @milkyskinandbones, @skinny._.binge, @_skinandbones__, and @applecoreanorexic.”
The lawsuit notes that Meta executives informed Zuckerberg “as early as 2017” that targeting children under 13 as potential users would increase “the acquisition rate when users turned 13.”
The complaint cited an internal Meta document from 2018 in which the company admitted it does “very little to keep U13s off our platform.”
The Post contacted Meta for comment on the recently unredacted complaint.
The states are seeking unspecified financial damages, as well as “injunctive relief” preventing Meta from engaging in the harmful business practices described in the lawsuit.
Meta previously said she was “disappointed” that the states chose to file a lawsuit rather than work with the company to address concerns. The company said it prevents users under 13 from using Instagram and does not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.
As The Post previously reported, the states also allege that Instagram and Facebook bombard young users with notifications that disrupt their sleep and disrupt their classes.
Notifications include so-called “haptic alerts” such as vibrations and pulses from the phone, as well as audible or banner notifications, emails, and “badge notifications” that display a red indicator showing unread messages.
Meta is one of several social media companies facing pressure from state and federal officials over their alleged failure to control content served to young users.
Instagram’s main rival, Chinese-owned TikTok, recently faced scrutiny after users began praising Osama Bin Laden following the Hamas attack on Israel.
