Monika Bickert: "I wanted to get your thoughts on the options in this doc about how to restrict recommendations of minors and adults to one another. My sense right now is that Product is wedded to Option 1 (status quo: cut out "risky adults" from recommendations to and from minors) and US Public Policy is wedded to Option 3 (significantly expand restrictions).
Candidly, I am hoping we can reach a middle ground and land on Option 2, which only allows recommendations between adults/minors if they are strongly connected (e.g. mutual friends or same contact info) or if the recommended account is a public figure with over 10k followers. Andy is not confident that we could get Product to move off of Option 1, but we feel comfortable pushing Option 2 with them. Antigone and team are ok with Option 2."
Kevin Martin: "Joel - Monika and I connected and I explained I had serious reservations that Option 2 is not strong enough and may put us in a vulnerable position publicly… Unfortunately I don't think option 2 provides nearly the protection that we need or that we should be providing to youth for numerous reasons."
"When considering the best policy option I think it is important to remember that we are not talking about limitations on interactions between youth and adults, but rather protections for with whom we should RECOMEND that youth connect. When we recommend an adult to a youth or vice versa, we are much more vulnerable – as we are then responsible for anything harmful that comes from the relationship. And it is much harder to defend mistakes as we are inserting ourselves into the relationship. While I understand product is whetted to option 1, I think this issue is very likely to blow up publicly and soon. As a result, I think we are better off escalating rather than agreeing to options that will result in public criticism later. If leadership decides to go with option 1, then they will do so understanding the risks and won't be surprised later. I have several specific concerns with option 2 that Monika outlines:"
"Basically our internal recommendations policy has 3 protections: (1) limits on risky adults; (2) an age limitation (no 35 to under 16 recommendations); and (3) a requirement that there be a connection through a mutual friend. While these internal protections on recommendations have never been enforced, option 2 is a significant reduction in the protections that are 'in place' and will be perceived as weakening them to the extent that the change in guidelines leaks. For example, in the chart I have attached, you can see that there are a significant number of recommendations for teens in the over 35 category that are occurring today as that limitation has not been enforced. So eliminating this protection entirely results in a significant change and will be perceived that way to the extent that this change is uncovered. With the public attention in this area and with ongoing litigation, I worry that all of the details will come out and it will become apparent that we never enforced the earlier guidelines and that we ultimately weakened the protections in ways that will be hard to explain and even understand (why do we need to recommend a 40 year old to a 15 year old). Again I am not suggesting we restrict such interactions, but only that we be more cautious in our recommendations."
"Second, Monika describes option 2 as only allowing recommendations if the recommended account is a public figure with over 10k followers, but I don't think that is complete. What she describes is actually a prong of our option 3. Option 2 allows public figures with 10k followers 'OR is a newly created (L90D) Professional Account with >1K followers*'. As I understand it the articulated concern by product is that they want to be able to recommend celebrities to teens to follow (e.g Taylor Swift to teens). The addition of the professional account with only 1k followers seems to go well beyond existing celebrities."
"Third, it is not clear that Option 2 alone will be able to withstand the inevitable public scrutiny. The limitation on 1 mutual connection is pretty broad and it is unclear how much protection that provides. Especially since we are still going back and forth on exactly what level of behavior will be deemed risky, a mutual contact requirement alone seems to offer too little protection. To be clear it is helpful but without more I worry it is too thin a reed to bear that much weight. It is too easy to meet. For example, every child who is connected to their team's coach would then be eligible to be recommended to every adult that the coach is connected to. Every work colleague. Every high school classmate. I worry that puts too much pressure both substantively and publicly on our MSCA test. The MSCA protection is too amorphous and in flux to be able to determine whether it will offer a sufficient protection for us to defend recommending children to adults and vice versa. The experience with both Francis Haugen and the earlier WSJ story should remind us that it is not what protections we put in place that protect us but rather what protections we can explain and seem reasonable publicly that will be important. I worry that the first time our MSCA system misses risky behavior and we recommend a child to a 45 year old because they went to high school with the teen's track coach, we will be very vulnerable."
Joel Kaplan: "I share the queasiness about the 'mutual connection' being protective enough, but a two-year requirement seems overly restrictive of potentially reasonable use cases (████ and ████ follow each other on IG (I think), for instance. Don't know if that was suggested, but would certainly seem like a good use case). So maybe finding something that is more of a 2.5. I'd also like to understand what work we are doing to dial up recall on the 'risky adults' classifier. Seems to me this might be the most powerful protection of all."
Monika Bickert: "We aren't necessarily arguing for less restrictiveness. We're simply trying to find an option that is realistic for both USPP and Product (they are quite far apart) AND that the Safety team can bless. I think we may just have to kick it up to you, Nick, etc. Product can articulate their concerns with each of the additions beyond Option 1. For instance, Product will point out that we are struggling to keep up with how young people use social media these days and that is really hurting us — one big thing is that young people like discovering and following new creators. They aren't interested in following the big name celebrities so much as they want to find the ones that they think have a niche that is cool. That's why we added a lower follower threshold for 'new creator' accounts in addition to the 10k threshold. They'll have similar points on the other requirements, which I'm sure Andy and Tiggy can also articulate."
Meta & Children's Online Safety