{"id":581054,"date":"2026-08-26T16:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/581054\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T16:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:42:15","slug":"metas-instagram-boss-admits-touting-teen-safety-tool-but-omitting-it-wasnt-used","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/581054\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s Instagram boss admits touting teen safety tool but omitting it wasn\u2019t used"},"content":{"rendered":"

On December 8, 2021, Mosseri testified at a Congressional hearing about the negative impacts of social media on young people. One day before, Meta published a blog post, authored by Mosseri, about rolling out new safety features for teens.<\/p>\n

The blog post said: \u201cEarly test results show that once teens set the reminders, more than 90% of them keep them on.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, that number referred to the number of people who kept it on after turning it on.<\/p>\n

When asked if Meta disclosed its low adoption, which only reached 1% or 2% of the accounts, Mosseri admitted the company did not – but said the safety features were later turned on by default in Teen Accounts, which have parental controls and launched in 2024.<\/p>\n

However, Mosseri couldn\u2019t recall if Meta had ever disclosed the percentage of teen accounts that have parental controls turned on.<\/p>\n

Meta knew that its tools for protecting teenagers on Instagram were largely ineffective, other witnesses have testified.<\/p>\n

Internal Meta documents shown to jurors on Tuesday said that Take A Break, which allows users to set reminders to stop scrolling, reached an adoption rate of 1.8%, while Quiet Mode, which silences late-night notifications, reached 8.7%.<\/p>\n

Under questioning by state lawyers, Francesco Fogu, Meta\u2019s director of product design at Instagram, said that he was not aware of the numbers but conceded that the company \u201cknew adoption rates would be lower\u201d if those tools were not turned on by default.<\/p>\n

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide the case using the jury\u2019s verdict as guidance, appeared stunned that Fogu was unaware of the internal data.<\/p>\n

If Meta is convicted<\/a>, US states will seek around US$200 billion ($334 billion) in penalties, and a court loss could force fundamental changes to its business model and send shockwaves through the industry.<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc, is expected to testify in the ongoing trial, though it’s unclear when. Photo via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Two former employees also testified that Take A Break and Quiet Mode were not effective.<\/p>\n

Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, testified last week: \u201cIn my experience, Take A Break is a feature that\u2019s designed to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n

George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on safety features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, said that adoption rates for those features were \u201cvery low and disappointing\u201d and just \u201ca drop in the ocean\u201d.<\/p>\n

He painted Meta\u2019s leadership as uninterested in meaningfully boosting their use.<\/p>\n

Leadership did not approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for younger teens, which held down adoption because the setting was hard to find in the app, Volichenko said.<\/p>\n

Switching the safety features on by default would have caused a \u201cnotable negative impact\u201d on user engagement, he said.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s business model revolves around selling advertising, and the company earns more when users spend more time on its apps.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On December 8, 2021, Mosseri testified at a Congressional hearing about the negative impacts of social media on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9980,16489,5811,23568,24752,4282,138,3013,179,1349,112798,2245,71,4791,702,1743,898,223129,157263,111,16652,139,69,255365,140781,7676,6302,13109,5163,47066,11408,1361,6305,50898,212625,286242,14578,13797,18324,1339,1530],"class_list":["post-581054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-adam","tag-admits","tag-admitted","tag-adoption","tag-ago","tag-boss","tag-business","tag-but","tag-california","tag-court","tag-disclosing","tag-early","tag-from","tag-instagram","tag-it","tag-launched","tag-meta","tag-metas","tag-mosseri","tag-new-zealand","tag-newly","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-omitting","tag-oversees","tag-rates","tag-safety","tag-several","tag-teen","tag-teenagers","tag-testing","tag-that","tag-tool","tag-tools","tag-touted","tag-touting","tag-tuesday","tag-used","tag-wasnt","tag-without","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}