Meta & Children's Online Safety

Documents / Chat: we will have to explain why we currently allow 20 year olds to message 13 year olds.

Chat: we will have to explain why we currently allow 20 year olds to message 13 year olds.

Internal document22 messages1 named participant, plus redacted or unnamed

Narratives:Profits over Safety

Open source PDF (2 pages)

A readable view of the chat, built from the transcribed text. Each row is one timestamped message in the record. Times are Pacific, as recorded. Check the Source PDF for the original layout.

████ name redacted. Different bars may be the same person or different people.

quoted in an excerpt in the archive.

Monday 13 February 2023

14:05████Hi both, I see you are both on the call for 18-20 talking to unconnected minors. As Ravi knows, I feel pretty strongly about this, for two reasons: it doesn't make intuitive sense (contradicting the age appropriate design code); this is exactly the sort of escalation we should be trying to resolve before it goes to Adam and Loredana. Gail
14:07████████ Gai l as we
14:11████For 1) I would be very comfortable for us using more nuanced language going forward, especially saw in the discussion on the UK telegraph article we have no specific language for who is an adult, who is a teen and who is a child. This appears to change by jurisdiction. @Ravi Sinha is also looking into whether we would have to declare a change in our approach in public, or just use more nuanced language going forward. I think we also need to identify if we need to declare what we were doing in the past. This appears to be where the biggest risk is. (I have checked this with US Fed and State Policy and EU privacy policy, and they don't think there is a risk here). Senka
14:12████I agree Gail. There are little safety gains (these are not the risky interactions that we really worry about) and the data shows that we will be preventing many valuable conversations between young people. The feature works as originally designed, but we made strong external statements refering to teens as u18, so we will need to see how to update them. Senka
14:12████I'll send you an example. Senka
14:13████Link: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/continuing-to-make-instagram-safer-for-the- youngest-members-of-our-community Senka
14:13████Shared an image
14:14████For 2) the safety risk appears to be from messaging per se, possibly exacerbated by age liars. Anand's data indicated that 32% of IIC reports relates to 16-17 year olds. Given we largely go with stated age, it's impossible to know if this is actual 16-17 year olds or age liars. Allowing 18 year olds to message 17 year olds wouldn't change this. Gail
14:16████████ Gail Gail
14:17████████
14:18████option 2 would appear to break the product, at a time when we are looking to engage with teens and offer them a positive, safe experience. We're basically saying that high school seniors need to work out a complicated way to message each other, if they meet at a party. Senka
14:19████I think that we define teens as users u18 in other products/features, so it feels more defensible to have coherent approach when talking to regulators. This is my interpretation of their feedback. Gail we have various definitions of what
14:21████yes, that is what they are saying, but it's actually not the case we mean by adults, teens and children. This came up in the UK escalation on Friday. PLTF EX Gail
14:21████Explaining to regulators that we allow 18 year olds to message 17 years olds is not difficult. Senka
14:27████What's your take @Ravi? Do we know how our competors define teens or minors? Gail
14:32████looks like they don't define teens, or youth (both of which they use) but do define minor as U18.
15:11Ravi SinhaThanks, Gail and Senka. I think that, if we're called to explain the shift to Option 3, we'll have likely have to get into the details of current policy, which I think is extremely hard to defend. Tho Antigone (and Comms) has concerns around reception of Option 3 in the US environment more broadly, my most acute external concerns center around what questions we'll get asked when we start talking to regulators/media about these protections differently, as we'll have to do with Option 3. But I'm certainly motivated to reach alignment on a unified position, so was hopeful that we could work through Gabe's suggestion of re-defining connectedness in this context in a way to blunt some of the unintended downsides of Option 2. Gail I haven't seen if we've explored that more fully. I'll check but do you think that's worth investigation? Gail
15:17████I think we should definitely explore this. Gail
15:17████I also think we're over-indexing on how we would explain this. We already have to explain unconnected adults, and manage that. Gail
15:18████I'm not worried about the general policy environment. I think in the regulatory environment we will have to explain why we currently allow 20 year olds to message 13 year olds. That seems like a far greater risk. Gail
15:19████It's why your question to Alexus is key: what exactly will we need to explain and when? Gail
15:21████Option 3 is allowing all high school seniors to message each other. Or high school seniors to message sophomores. or college freshmen to message high school seniors.