2014–2026
539 passages quoted from Meta's internal records, court filings and congressional testimony, in date order. Each is labelled with its source.
"Do we agree we are not properly resourced to address child safety issues?" "Do we think it is worth more deeply exploring an org structure shift? Does either model presented seem like the right starting point?" "While we do that should we move forward with more HC for existing teams with child safety focus?"
Suicide & self-injury
"Classifiers: technical, legal and operational challenges to global use." "Borderline and aggregated content lack classifiers to address at scale." "Resources: lack differentiated responses and resources recommended by experts." "Privacy: infrastructure limitations inhibit ability to make necessary guarantees." "IG: DMs, groups being used to promote SSI and we don't scan there, and have no e2e resilient tech yet."
████: "The main findings of the [Nielsen deactivation study] are: 1. People who stopped using Facebook for a week reported an improvement in certain types of emotions (e.g., depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison), but no change in other outcomes (e.g., political polarization, or meaningful interactions). 2. Most of the effects we found are linked to people's beliefs about Facebook. For example, the reductions in feelings of depression, anxiety, and loneliness associated with deactivation appeared mostly among participants who believed (prior to participating in the study) that Facebook was bad for them." Nick Clegg: "I'm also keen to understand the distinctions being drawn here: whilst I understand this study seems to suggest that the media narrative around FB heavily shapes people's perceptions of their own use of FB, if the net effect is that not using FB makes some people feel better (in some respects) is it really possible to claim that the effect is all due to media conditioning/perception?
████: "We finally have the results from the pilot stage of the Nielsen deactivation study… we are: 1. Exploring whether to make the results of the study public." Nick Clegg: "whilst I understand this study seems to suggest that the media narrative around FB heavily shapes people's perceptions of their own use of FB, if the net effect is that not using FB makes some people feel better (in some respects) is it really possible to claim that the effect is all due to the media conditioning/perception? For obvious reasons, our critics will be quick to claim that we are trying to shift responsibility from our own products to the media. There may well be a case to do so – it certainly looks like it from this study - but we need to really stress test how we explain and assert that before deciding how/when to publish." Alex Schultz: "I actually think that there is a need to publish this ourselves so we have some chance to shape the narrative."
Addiction & problematic useLikes
"Seeing more posts with high Like counts (10+ for friends, 10K+ for verified accounts) is associated with feeling worse: more negative and less positive social comparison." "Like counts are likely more strongly associated with negative comparison than comment counts." "These findings suggest that hiding Like counts can reduce negative outcomes of social comparison, corroborating research on Project Daisy."
Kyle Andrews: "We can't give people the ability to say they're under 13, right? So maybe there's also an 'other' category?" Wendy Tegge Gross: "I've been given a hard no to other category" Wendy Tegge Gross: "especially if the upper end is a 46+, since other would, by definition, be under 14" Wendy Tegge Gross: "*13" ████: "Would it be ok to let people choose under 13 for off-platform, unbranded surveys (so that they can be terminated)?" Kyle Andrews: "Hmm, maybe if we're not collecting any identifying info before terminating? My understanding was we can't ask if they're under 13 because it means we'd have to delete their account" ████: "Makes sense. I'm reviewing an off-platform survey asking that, and it's unbranded, so it's not associated with any FB/IG account or collecting any PII. So I guess that is fine."
Child sexual exploitationDirect MessagingFriend/Account Suggestions
Darius Kilstein: "I wonder what % of grooming happens from people with at least 1 NFX action? Like maybe there's a solution for non mutual friending that does not require a prior action against them" ████: "The issue here is that people lie, and we know that's quite prevalent… Especially groomers - they lie to bypass our detection and even help them find minors" Darius Kilstein: "Have we considered settings to just let people turn off receiving messages from people that do t follow them ?" ████: "We have, and IGWB even explored private by default for teens but the growth impact was too high and the decision was to explore more nuanced and less blunt solutions."
Child sexual exploitationFriend/Account Suggestions
"These restrictions on messaging and recommendations/search are what we have on FB today. We need to have some equivalency on Instagram." "eg: PYMK was responsible for 80% of violating adult/minor connections."
Addiction & problematic useContent Algorithm
Wendy Gross: "people feel low and then content makes them feel worse" ████: "but this should support our 'feeding the spiral' theory right? regardless of who starts it, someone feeling bad sees content that makes them feel bad, they engage with it, and then their IG is flooded w it" Wendy Gross: "yup… looking at overall subjective well-being supports the idea of feeding the spiral" ████: "yupppp"
Child sexual exploitationSuicide & self-injuryFinancial sextortion
Pouya ████: "BTW this SEV is particularly painful. Thousands of minors have been reporting IIC T1 abuse and even though we knew that there is IIC T1 going on (more than 50% of which is sextortion which can lead to suicide) we haven't done anything. We had a broken escalation path and no measurement. God knows what happened to those kids" Jennifer Malia ████: "The perpetrators have been disabled, yes?" Pouya ████: "Yes but what does that do?" Jennifer Malia ████: "At least they weren't continuing to abuse directly. But I agree it's a small measure." Pouya ████: "In sextortion normally the abusers have a network of fake accounts so it's probably not very helpful" Lisa ████: "Note I only have 2 FTCs staffing English Escalations only, about 200 hours more a week requested but not on the way yet. 2 more English FTCs on the way by EOY but that's it… backlogs are 3000++ across IG, FB etc. -> IG escalations were never worked, someone created a Queue before I started and COINV/Chelsea/Zach didn't know about it (IG English backlog 1897)" Lisa ████: "Investigators don't matter it's all Triage now. It used to go: Scaled Review -> Triage -> Anything not dropped to COINV now Scaled Review -> Triage send standard report -> less than 10 a week that meet specific conditions go to COINV" Lisa ████: "COINV have backlog of 1300 also (was 2000) and we know that's reportable" Jennifer Malia ████: "I think we can all agree that this whole situation is Not Good and there are Several issues blocking us from correctly reporting all the T1 we know about to NCMEC/LE."
Child sexual exploitation
"The [Content Operations] human review capacity for CEI is at ~30%; [Content Operations] Safety suspects this will continue to be true for many more months to come for large pools of queues with <20% projected supply for the near future."
Body image & eating disordersSuicide & self-injury
"Examples of bad experiences often in policy gaps… Thinspiration… Easy to find content adjacent to eating disorder part of SSI and to broader social comparison and body image issue-triggers."
Body image & eating disorders
"Social media causes social comparison and poor body image (especially among teen girls and women, but men are also found to be affected)."
Body image & eating disordersFilters
"Should we allow augmented reality (AR) effects that promote beauty standards only attainable through plastic surgery? We're seeing a rise in popularity of beauty effects – both in creation and use – which has reinvigorated the conversation on the stance that Facebook and Instagram should take on how those filters relate to body image, mental health, and wellbeing. This is especially sensitive for its potential impact on younger users, who are the biggest demographic using our Spark effects." "The increasing use of face filters on social media leads to unrealistic beauty standards, mental health issues, and has been postulated to be related to a rise in plastic surgery" "Facebook and Instagram use is associated with body image issues and anxiety among users and particularly among women and teenage girls. Airbrushed and unrealistic images of women online can lead to eating disorders and body dysmorphia" "Social media causes social comparison and poor body image (especially among teen girls and women, but men are also found to be affected)." "Users love beauty filters but filters can exacerbate body image issues by blurring the line between what is and is not real." "Filtering leads to unrealistic beauty standards, mental health issues, and a rise in plastic surgery" "The altering of selfies appears to be connected with negative impacts on both the person posting it, and those viewing it in terms of mental health, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorder behaviors." "Our teams have an important decision to make around where to draw the line on what types of filters we will develop/allow. For example, in the past the IG team made the decision to not pursue facial filtered that produce images only achievable by plastic surgery (i.e. face deformation)."
Robert Michael Sherman: "We talked with them a year ago about youth issues, which was when we had the discussion around age verification. One takeaway from that was that we should begin advocating for platform-level/industry-level solutions as opposed to FB 'owning' it entirely. We've been advocating for this and have gotten some traction but (1) the feedback has been that FB also has to do work on this rather than just advocate to push it off to others, and (2) the next step is to put together a spec with more detail on what this would look like. Probably worth calling out the OS/platform level verification as a piece of the work we are doing centrally.. The broader takeaway was that we shouldn't do proactive enforcement unilaterally / without everyone else having to do that, and we should revisit in a year to see where we are." Shavi Goel: "The overall prioritization across all obligations was based on enforcement risk, current compliance gap assessment and opportunity to shape the law. India is high on all three... Youth is a combination of many different laws which are medium to high enforcement risk, High on mismatch between compliance and current practices and high on policy opportunity to shape upcoming IDPC and ICO guidelines"
PLAINTIFFS’ CHARACTERIZATION
Addiction & problematic use
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Suicide & self-injury
Hate speechContent Algorithm
"What pain points do Black users aged 13-14 experience on Instagram?" "Young Black users of Instagram report experiences of cultural appropriation and race-based negativity on the platform. Coupled with perceptions of algorithmic bias (that Instagram's algorithm favors content from white users/creators) and suspected shadowbanning of Black-owned accounts (that content is demoted without an account being banned), this creates impressions that both the people on Instagram and the app itself may be biased. Black users say it is difficult to find Black-centric content. Many try to 'fool' the algorithm by only following and liking content from Black-owned accounts, which helps create a more Black-centric experience and to find communities of support on the app."
Notifications
"We limit the amount of information in notifications because we want people to come onto the site. A few years ago we stopped sending out emails telling you what happened – e.g. telling you what your friend did – instead we just say 'someone commented on your post,' in the hope that you'll click through. This is a clear value-engagement tradeoff. We see similar effects on push notifications about friend activity: when we send fewer notifications, that increases engagement because people come to the site to check what's happening"
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Content Algorithm
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Likes
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Sources include internal documents, public filings and press reports. “Alleged by plaintiffs” denotes the plaintiffs’ characterization, not Meta’s own words. Source labels identify provenance, not a finding of fact.
Meta & Children's Online Safety