Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Opposition]: In 2023… Meta's researchers launched a longitudinal study to follow 4,000 U.S. teenagers over the academic year. The goal of this survey was to measure teens' attentiveness ("Possible unintended, unaware, and/or habitual use") and capability ("Pe…
"Overall Takeaways/Recommendations: We are currently planning to sunset Take A Break as part of time management consolidation. This aligns with the fact that teens mostly have short sessions. Take A Break is likely not the appropriate market fit time managemen…
"Financial sextortion cases predominantly impact boys age 14-17"
"1 in 8 Of those who reported impact described thoughts of suicide or self harm."
"IG is the leading platform reported for initial meeting [45%]"
"IG was the leading platform for both threats …
"Teens' average scores across scales assessing sense of control (attentiveness and capability) indicate they report lower control, on average, over various aspects of their use of IG and TikTok compared to other apps."
"Teen average scores on subscales assess…
"This is so crazy to me…We found groups of new teen users who see Reels just Filled with sexualized media after sexualized…like their whole tab"
"The way we found this was so crazy. We looked at Reels VM scores for some users of interest and found that there …
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
Specifically, with accounts clearly belonging to children, Meta has:
• Proactively served and directed them to a stream of egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content;…
"A key goal in H1 2024 is to improve Safety for Teens. The top opportunity to do this is to improve enforcements on non-recommendable queries such as 'porn', 'meth', 'self harm', and 'skinny body', a gap that many competitors have already addressed."
"Current…
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Complaint]: Even though "this is the kind of thing that pisses Apple off to the extent of threatening to remove us from the App Store," as of mid-2020, Meta had no timeline for "when we'll stop adults from messaging minors in IG Direct."
That remained true e…
Praveen ████: "shared: Instagram_Instagram_s_Algorithm_Delivers_Toxic_Video_Mix_to_Adults_Who_Follow_Children_-_WSJ.pdf"
Tomas Kabbabe: "It is true that the article seems like an intentional hit piece… But at the same time, some of the content shouldn't…
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Complaint]: Instagram heavily emphasized content that promoted negative appearance comparison. Fashion and beauty, relationships, "[w]estern pop stars who emphasize their bodies," and images that "emphasize women's bodies generally (e.g., cleavage, swimwear)"…
Andy ████: "Flagging this new video Horwitz just sent of the AYSF recommendations for one of the Instagram accounts he's used to do this child safety research. Can we please look into this? I'd have assumed at this point the steps we've taken would have…
Andy Stone: "Hi folks - following up here with a smaller group just to make you aware of something related to Jeff's ongoing reporting of child safety issues on the platform. I don't want to come across as alarmist - and myself have pushed back vociferously on…
"We know that SSI and ED have a significantly disproportionate large teen audience. SSI and ED SWOP among teens is ████ higher than among adults on IG (query). When examining consumption patterns among high consumers (>= 8 pieces of violating content) of…
Allegations, not findings. Open the quoted internal records to read the source.
[Complaint]: Only one out of every fifty pieces of content is actually "age-appropriate nutritious, or the sort of content we would like to promote to teens."
Problematic Use: Definition & Impact
"Problem statement: Occurs when people feel they lack control over their usage of technology and this leads to negative life impact (e.g. on sleep, productivity, parenting)"
"Importance to key stakeholders:
• Experts: Pr…
████: "Reflecting on ████ comment about the difference between a team that finds and fixes societally important user problems and what the Integrity teams do, I think it's important to recognize what our partner teams do and don't do. Relevance: Cr…
"Key observation themes are summarized below:
- Inconsistent suppression on data collection of contact information for teens during the business account conversion; Lack of suppression on data collection for users with unknown age
- Inaccurate and insufficien…
"Almost all participants thought that younger users and new users should be defaulted to private"
"• Almost all participants across ages believed that a young person's account (e.g., anyone below 11-13, and in some cases up to 15) should automatically be priv…
Rori ████: "[E]arlier today a man in Bosnia live-streamed the murder of a woman on IG and claimed to have murdered at least two other people, after which he reportedly took his own life… it is possible Meta may be criticised for the length of time the li…
"Teens are still developing, novelty-seeking and impulsive . . . Cool, so we probably shouldn't have ranking primarily driven by p(eyeballtime) and p(engagement), which is how it currently works."
"Scientific evidence suggests that harmful content exposure as well as excessive and problematic social media use primary areas for concern."
"Teens who spend more than 3 hours/day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes"
"Problematic Use Definition
1. A perceived lack of control over usage of a technology or social media platform and
2. This lack of control is perceived to lead to negative life impacts (e.g., in domains such as relationships, work/school, sleep, etc)"
"Person…
"In H1'22, we proposed defaulting new teens into Take a Break based on positive feedback from teens, parents, regulators, and press."
"Why we did not pursue it
1. Leadership shared that the bar for defaults is high and should consider policy/legal requirement…
2excerpts
Sources: published internal records, unsealed discovery exhibits and court filings in MDL 3047 and related litigation. An allegation in a filing is not an independently verified fact.
Meta & Children's Online Safety