Meta debated unshipping Time Spent tools despite knowing they were "the biggest proof point we have on tech addiction"

████: "We're emailing to start the process of unshipping Time Spent. We think this will be uncontroversial for most product stakeholders given that the phone OSs since replicated the functionality and the metrics in the tool cannot match what is reported at an OS level presenting a metrics integrity risk. Outreach disagrees with unshipping unless we could quickly move on building an acceptable update or replacement." "Time Spent tools are crucial proof points when speaking to consumers, the press, and stakeholders about our efforts to combat social media addiction. We've also recently heard from teens that the amount of time they spend on IG is one of the worst aspects of their relationship with the app. Outreach feels strongly that we should not remove these tools (or replace with Ads team proposal, which may fundamentally change the tool's purpose), and instead invest in updating these tools to better fit user needs, especially since Facebook is likely announcing an update." Yoav Shapira: "I'd like to unship this without a replacement." ████: "I'm also supportive of unshipping, but one thing for us to think about is how Time Spent could impact future work in the Mental Health area (e.g. Social Comparison) and how we might bring transparency to what people are spending time on (including if they are spending too much time in the app). Of course there are other ways to do that, but if transparency around time spent in the app is a direction we'd like to explore then revisiting this feature in the future might be necessary." Karina Newton: "For policy POV background, the time spent dash + end of feed notification is the biggest proof point we have on tech addiction/problematic use and the tool with the most positive sentiment from our mental health stakeholders -- there's no product work we've done in the last four years that comes close and we wouldn't have the credibility we now have in the social comparison/mental health partner space had we not launched this. It also has outsized policy value as we held multiple design hacks on the time spent tools with the UK, US, and German governments and it was a key subject of Vishal's testimony to UK parliament. In order to land this unship successfully we would need to land the why, and without doing so we would lose significant credibility with our policy and mental health stakeholders (and the fact that people who use it spend less time on Instagram underscores the delicacy). My hunch is adoption is low not only because the device level info is now so good, but also because we did no in-app education about it and haven't evolved or improved it over time (I don't believe we've had PM support since ████ left). The metrics issue is really problematic so I understand why it's so tempting to unship, but I don't think that's going to land well without having something that addresses the underlying issue around problematic use which is a space Well-Being, to ████ point, is so actively working on. If the metrics issue is the core problem, is there not something we could do in terms of pivoting the product where we take away the dash piece that causes metric issues (and can talk about iOS/Android doing such a good job of that) but keep the reminder feature and maybe package/add an entry point to the unfollow/graph trimming pieces growth has done. I.e. is unship our only option or is there some nominal amount of work we could do to evolve it so we can maintain the value we still have in it and explain the why in a thoughtful manner?" Yoav Shapira: "I remain a fan of unshipping this, too. Previously we thought we might bundle the removal with a new feature around 'away mode' or 'take a break.' But that's been deprioritized, sadly, for another P0." ████: "PMM / Comms felt strongly that it will land poorly to remove this feature that is well appreciated by some when we evaluated the unship in March before COVID surge." ████: "The time spent unship proposal went through the IG Unship Review process (w/ ████ and came back as unship." ████: "Hi! I know this conversation is currently paused, but wanted to share another reason why it's really crucial to keep (or update) Time Spent tools. Much of the coverage around the Feed Recs launch has been around IG caring less about digital well-being, but did note that IG still has tools to address time spent. Important for us to have proof points to counter negative press around well-being (knowing that Feed Recs is a priority for IG)."