Bullying & harassment

Arturo Bejar warned Mark Zuckerberg about the prevalence of negative experiences on Instagram

51% of Instagram users say 'yes' to having had a bad or harmful experience in the last 7 days. Out of those 1% of report and of those 2% have the content taken down (i.e. 0.02%). …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"You'd think we JUST started working on integrity with issues like this one"

Melissa ████: "I'm not surprised we have bad hashtags. our search safety team is a few employees who look at a list of popular hashtags every week to decide which to filter …

Tomas Kabbabe and names withheld in filing

Profits over Safety

Nick Clegg: "We are not on track to succeed for our core well-being topics (problematic use, bullying & harassment, connections, and SSI),* and are at increased regulatory risk and external criticism."

Mark KX, Pratiti and ████ have put together the proposal below for additional investment to strengthen our position on wellbeing across the company. …

Nick Clegg

Profits over Safety

"Teens have significantly more negative experiences than adults"

Overall, teens have significantly more negative experiences than adults. …

Unnamed employee

KnowledgeYouth Targeting

"Teens are receiving many unwanted DM requests (DMs from unconnected people)"

1. Teens are receiving many unwanted DM requests (DMs from unconnected people), leading to integrity risk and slowing down new teen acquisition 2. …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

Meta knew that defaulting teens into privacy settings would "[k]eep more people safe" at the expense of "risk to engagement metrics"

1. Protect teens from unwanted DMs asap to keep them safe where bullying happens most 2. …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"We have data to show that Teens have higher prevalences of violating content than Non-Teens... driven by Bullying... and SSI"

We have data to show that Teens have higher prevalences of violating content than Non-Teens (1.4x-1.8x SWOP), driven by Bullying (1.9x-3.1x) and SSI (1.8x-3.8x) and Cold Start …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"7% of teens report experiencing bullying on Instagram each week."

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

████: "'death group' hashtags in Russia encouraged teenagers to commit suicide"

[Site Integrity: Key issues to resource, Executive Summary]: "There are 4 key areas that we believe will benefit from more intense integrity work." …

Name withheld in filing

Knowledge

"Among IG users, teens experience the highest prevalence (2.5x) of bullying and harassment and are more likely to experience severe forms."

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

Cayce Savage: "I was told not to investigate the kinds of harm children were experiencing in VR."

I quickly became aware that it was not uncommon for children in VR to experience bullying, sexual assault, to be solicited for nude photographs and sexual acts by pedophiles." …

Unnamed employee

Concealment

"SSI/ED has a disproportionately large teen audience on IG with SSI/ED teen SWOP being 2.5x that of adults."

Teens have higher prevalences of violating content than non-teens (1.4x-1.8x SWOP), driven by elevated levels of bullying, SSI, hate speech, nudity and VNI." …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"Younger people report higher rates of every issue"

A little over half of respondents (51.6%) experienced at least one issue in the past 7 days" …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

Investment in teen-specific Problematic Use was "Mid-Low," teen-specific SSI was "Low-Mid," and eating disorders was "Low"

Unnamed employee

Profits over Safety

"Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens"

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"Almost all participants thought that younger users and new users should be defaulted to private"

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"We can do a reverse infer to find out people who goto xx[High School], and potentially use it in some promotion flows"

████: "I met with ████ from the TBH team earlier this week to pick his brain on teens... Here are the highlights: 1. Their growth strategy was to go school by school. …

Names withheld in filing

Youth Targeting

████: "Teens weaponize IG features to torment each other"

# INSTAGRAM CONFLICTS Greetings! Here are the results from our interview study (N=24) of the what, who, how, and impacts of conflicts on Instagram." …

Name withheld in filing

Knowledge

"Model for how social media usage may be linked to suicide/self-harm"

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"Sexually Suggestive Content featuring Minors (SSCM) is 2-3x higher on Reels than Explore"

Ranking models cause integrity regressions by increasing the prevalence of non-recommendable content. …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge

"~12%** of content potentially may be 'age inappropriate' for teens but not covered by current policies."

Teens experience harm at higher levels than non-teens" "1. …

Unnamed employee

Knowledge