Meta And Zuckerberg Must Answer For Failure To Protect Children

A federal judge refused to dismiss an SEC complaint filed by shareholders alleging, among other things, "misstatements and omissions about Instagram's harm to young users".

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In 2021, a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a former data scientist and product manager, said her employer, Meta Platforms, Inc., prioritized revenue at the cost of safety and social responsibility.

She said Meta, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, told investors there was little research showing that Instagram was adversely impacting children and that any negative effects were small. Haugen revealed internal research found that Instagram caused or worsened mental health issues for teenage girls. She said Meta staffers had quit in frustration over the Meta’s refusal to act.

The Wall Street Journal then published an exposé called The Facebook Files, in which it reported Meta not only ignored harm to children but overstated its growth rate by misleading investors about the number of duplicate accounts, exempted high profile users from moderation, tweaked its algorithm to amplify polarizing and divisive content, etc., etc.

It is one of the biggest scandals in American history.

America’s largest social media platform, generating tens of billions in revenue annually, ignored evidence of harm to children for years to preserve profits?

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the U.S. District Court of Northern District of California refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, Ohio’s largest public employee pension fund, that challenged dozens of statements made by Meta officials as false or misleading in violation of the Securities and Exchange Act.

Evidence also shows Meta was more concerned with retaining users than preventing human trafficking.

Judge Martinez-Olguin said claims by the former head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, that research was “bidirectional” were false and misleading. “[S]tating that the research showed that teenage girls said Instagram was helping their mental health… was misleading given Meta’s extensive internal research contradicting this assertion,” she said.