Meta allegedly stalled internal efforts to address child predators, hid evidence, Elon Musk calls revelations ‘terrible’

Billionaire technocrat Elon Musk weighed in on the Meta Platforms controversy, after reports emerged that Mark Zuckerberg’s company allegedly stalled internal efforts to prevent child predators from contacting minors on the platform, and hid evidence of harm caused due to social media.

Responding to a Times post on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which alleged that Meta was aware of “millions of adult strangers” contacting children on its social media platforms yet rarely acted, Elon Musk simply stated: “Terrible”.

The report further reported that court filings showed that Meta’s products exacerbated mental health issues in teens, and that content related to eating disorders, suicide, and child sexual abuse was frequently detected — yet were also rarely acted upon.

What US court filings show: Key Highlights

According to a Reuters reports, the filings allege that Meta:

• Intentionally designed its youth safety features to be ineffective and rarely used them for fear of it hindering the platforms’ growth.
• The papers also alleged that Meta required users to be caught at least 17 times “trafficking people for sex” before their accounts on platforms would be blocked or removed. The documents called this a “a very, very, very highstrike threshold”, Reuters added.
• Further, it alleged that Meta was aware that tweaking algorithms to increase teen engagement resulted in them being exposed to more harmful content, but continued to do it anyway.
• Filings also accused Meta of stalling internal efforts “for years”, despite such steps being able to block predators from contacting children. It also reportedly pressured staff to disseminate arguments supporting its decision as the best course of action.
• Papers also showed that Mark Zuckerberg himself, in a text message in 2021, said that child safety was not his top concern compared to “a number of other areas I’m more focused on building like the metaverse”.
• It also showed that Mark Zuckerberg, dismissed or ignored requests by then global public policy head Nick Clegg to better fund child safety work.

Buried evidence of harm? Meta reacts…

The Reuters report added that a 2020

Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.

In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.

Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company.

Privately, however, staff assured Nick Clegg, Meta’s then-head of global public policy, that the conclusions of the research were valid.

“The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”

Despite Meta’s own work documenting a causal link between its products and negative mental health effects, the filing alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.

In a statement Saturday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the study was stopped because its methodology was flawed and that it worked diligently to improve the safety of its products.

“The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens,” he said.

PLAINTIFFS ALLEGE PRODUCT RISKS WERE HIDDEN

The allegation of Meta burying evidence of social media harms is just one of many in a late Friday filing by Motley Rice, a law firm suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat on behalf of school districts around the country. Broadly, the plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the internally recognized risks of their products from users, parents and teachers.

TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Allegations against Meta and its rivals include tacitly encouraging children below the age of 13 to use their platforms, failing to address child sexual abuse content and seeking to expand the use of social media products by teenagers while they were at school. The plaintiffs also allege that the platforms attempted to pay child-focused organizations to defend the safety of their products in public.

In one instance, TikTok sponsored the National PTA and then internally boasted about its ability to influence the child-focused organization. Per the filing, TikTok officials said the PTA would “do whatever we want going forward in the fall… (t)hey’ll announce things publicly(,), (t)heir CEO will do press statements for us.”

Meta’s Stone disputed these allegations, saying the company’s teen safety measures are effective and that the company’s current policy is to remove accounts as soon as they are flagged for sex trafficking.

He said the suit misrepresents its efforts to build safety features for teens and parents, and called its safety work “broadly effective.”

“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions,” Stone said.

The underlying Meta documents cited in the filing are not public, and Meta has filed a motion to strike the documents. Stone said the objection was to the over-broad nature of what plaintiffs are seeking to unseal, not unsealing in its entirety.

A hearing regarding the filing is set for January 26 in Northern California District Court.

(With inputs from Reuters)