important young users<\/a> were to Meta\u2019s business.<\/p>\nOne report, titled \u201cLong Term Retention: The Young Ones Are the Best Ones and Other Learnings,\u201d described \u201ctweens\u201d aged 10 to 12 as \u201cspecial\u201d because they had the \u201chighest long-term retention of all our age groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 2017 email to Instagram head Adam Mosseri described \u201ctotal teen time spent\u201d as an overall company goal.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill displayed an internal Meta chart that showed estimates that about 20% of 11-year-olds in the U.S and 30% of 12-year-olds were on Instagram.<\/p>\n
A 2018 email from a company executive shown in court referred to kids under 13, saying, \u201cWe do very little to keep U13s off our platform.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill also shared internal surveys showing that in the space of one week, 27% of kids 13 to 15 witnessed bullying on Meta\u2019s platforms, 13% received unwanted sexual advances, 12% saw images or videos of violence and 19% witnessed nudity.<\/p>\n
The judge, Gonzalez Rogers, advised the jury that federal law prohibits Meta from being held liable for content posted on its platforms by other people.<\/p>\n
But, said Vincent Joralemon, a director at UC Berkeley\u2019s Center for Law & Technology, the states aren\u2019t asking for Meta to be held liable over predatory or bullying messages on their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re asking the judge to conclude that Meta\u2019s own internal research showed what was happening to teenagers on its platforms, and that Meta told the public, Congress and parents something different,\u201d Joralemon said.<\/p>\n
Meta lawyer Schmidt told the court that the company did not dispute that some teenagers struggle to manage time online, kids under 13 sneak onto Meta\u2019s platforms and people \u201cpost negative things on Facebook and Instagram.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Meta sought to learn from users\u2019 experiences and improve the platforms, he said.<\/p>\n
A major part of that work is safety research, Schmidt said. He displayed internal communications saying, \u201cWhere could we be better supporting our Instagram community?\u201d, \u201chow to best support teens\u201d and \u201cprioritize mental health and well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schmidt showed popups that appear on Instagram prompting users to take breaks or to explore a different topic, which he described as tools to promote safe use. Facebook and Instagram provide safety guides for parents, he noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only was Meta working to develop these safety tools, it was working to tell people about it,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n
Meta must walk a fine line in removing content \u2014 \u201csomeone will say, \u2018That\u2019s censorship’\u201d \u2014 and the volume of social media posts makes finding problematic content difficult, he said. Still, he said from April to June in 2022, Meta removed 8.2 million posts for bullying and harassment, 13.5 million for hate speech, and 19.3 million for violence and inciting violence.<\/p>\n
He said Meta uses \u201ccomputer detection\u201d to spot kids under 13 on its platforms, allows people to report under-13s\u2019 accounts and trains reviewers to find and investigate possible violations of the age rule.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the account can\u2019t prove that they\u2019re over 13, then the account gets deleted,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n
Schmidt sought to defuse some of the inflammatory evidence the states will introduce, such as one employee emailing another calling Instagram \u201ca drug,\u201d and the other responding, \u201cWe\u2019re basically pushers.\u201d Schmidt suggested such \u201cloose\u201d language was typical among colleagues.<\/p>\n
He addressed a statement of O\u2019Neill\u2019s that a Meta survey of users found 1 in 5 teens on Instagram said it made them feel worse about themselves. But about 40% said the website made them feel better about themselves, and a similar share said it had no effect. \u201cWhy did they focus on that 20%?\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n
Schmidt suggested the states, seeking to prove Meta made false statements about product safety, cherry-picked \u201ca tiny subset of those statements\u201d from 12 years of communications between tens of thousands of Meta employees.<\/p>\n
Unlike a criminal case, where the burden of proof is \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt,\u201d in this civil case, the states need to convince the jury that it is \u201cmore probably true than not\u201d that Meta broke state and federal laws, Gonzalez Rogers told the jury.<\/p>\n
The states want the judge to order Meta to scrap allegedly addictive design features<\/a> from Facebook and Instagram feeds for children under 18, including infinite scrolling, visible \u201clikes,\u201d beauty filters and algorithms intended to boost use.<\/p>\nThey also want limits on young users\u2019 daily time on Facebook and Instagram, with blackout periods during school and at night. Meta could be required to prevent children from creating multiple accounts to evade parental controls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California accused Meta on Tuesday of studying \u201cvulnerabilities in teens\u2019 brains\u201d to hook children on Facebook and Instagram,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,387,7,1312,332,2333,23695,7644,1533,181,23,21163,2649,100,143,145,144,395,182,397,1970],"class_list":["post-437000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-bay-area","tag-business","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-east-bay","tag-editors-picks","tag-facebook-meta","tag-instagram","tag-keywee","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-menlo-park","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-peninsula","tag-pm-report","tag-san-mateo-county","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}