Meta, which supports social platforms Facebook and Instagram He hid results of studies on the impact of social media on children's intellectual health. The paper was revealed by a collective suit brought by American school districts against Meta and another platforms.
Zuckerberg hid investigation indicating the harmfulness of social media. In a 2020 investigation task called “Project Mercury”, nThe auctioners collaborated with Nielsen's investigation firm to measure the impact of "deactivation" of Facebook and Instagram accounts on users. To the company's disappointment, "people who stopped utilizing Facebook as a consequence of bana per week reported a greater sense of depression, anxiety, loneliness compared to others" – reads interior documents. The problem is mainly for young girls.
Meta alternatively of publishing these findings or conducting additional studies, halted further work and declared that the negative investigation results had been contaminated by a "existing media narrative" about the company. Privately, however, employees assured Nick Clegg, then head of global public policy in Meta, that the conclusions of the investigation were correct.
"Nielsen's survey indeed has a causal impact on intellectual problems" – was to compose an anonymous technological employee. In the meantime,ak claims the document, Meta, although she herself has conducted studies documenting the causal link between her products and the negative impact on intellectual health, stated before legislature that she is incapable to find whether her products are harmful to teenage girls.
Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, reported in a message released on Saturday that the survey had been discontinued due to a flawed methodology and that the company is making all effort to improve the safety of its products. "The full study will show that for more than a decade we have listened to our parents, studied the most crucial problems and introduced real changes to defend teenagers" – he said.
Meta's accusation of concealing evidence of social media harm is only 1 of many accusations filed on Friday night by Motley Rice's law firm, who sued Meta, Google, TickTok and Snapchat in the name of school districts throughout the country. In general, the plaintiff argues that the companies deliberately hid from users, parents and teachers the risks of their products, which they knew from interior research.
TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not respond immediately to a comment request. The allegations against Meta and its competitors include silently encouraging children under the age of 13 to usage their platforms, failing to respond to content related to kid sexual abuse, and striving to increase the usage of social media by teenagers during their school education. The plaintiffs besides claim that the platforms tried to pay children's organisations for defending the safety of their products in public space.
In 1 case, TikTok sponsored the National Association of Parents and Teachers (NPTA), and then praised his ability to influence an organization focused on children. According to the documents, TikTok's representatives said NPTA “He will do whatever he wants in the fall... they will announce everything publicly, their president will issue press releases for us.”
- The Meta deliberately designed its safety functions for young people so that they were ineffective and seldom used, and besides blocked the investigating of safety features that she feared might harm the company's development.
- Meta's platform required users to be caught 17 times in a sexual trafficking effort before being removed from their platform. The paper describes this as “a very, very, very advanced alert threshold”.
- Meta realized that optimizing products to increase the engagement of teenagers resulted in showing them more harmful content, but she did it anyway.
- For years Meta has held back interior efforts to prevent kid molesters from contact with minors due to concerns about the increase in pedophiles and has put force on safety personnel to spread arguments justifying the decision not to take action.
- In a 2021 text message, Mark Zuckerberg stated that he would not say that the safety of children is his priority, "I have many another areas on which I focus more, specified as building a metaverse" – he wrote. Zuckerberg besides rejected Cleg's requests for better backing for kid safety measures.
Stone of Meta denied these accusations, claiming that the company's safety measures to guarantee the safety of teenagers are effective, and the company's current policy is to delete accounts immediately after being reported for sexual trafficking. He stated that the suit incorrectly portrayed the company's efforts to make safety for teenagers and parents, and his safety efforts called it "generally effective".
