this friday October 25 2019, File photo Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the "News Tab" at the Paley Center in New York.


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly personally blocked initiatives aimed at promoting the well-being of teenagers on Facebook and Instagram. According to internal communications that have been made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit by the company, sometimes against some of its senior executives. . .

The lawsuit, originally filed in a Massachusetts state court last month, called on Zuckerberg to do more by Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and global affairs president Nick Clegg, who accused Zuckerberg of ignoring or shutting down top executives in undisclosed communications. . To protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States.

The revelations highlight Zuckerberg's attitude toward decisions at Meta that could affect billions of users. They also spoke about the tensions that arose from time to time between Zuckerberg and other Meta officials.

Rejection of safety recommendations.


Zuckerberg vetoed a 2019 proposal for Instagram's so-called "beauty filters," a technology that digitally alters a user's appearance on their screen and raises unrealistic body image expectations, accusing them of harming teens' mental health. Massachusetts officials filed the complaint this week.

After sitting on the proposal for several months, Zuckerberg wrote to his aides in April 2020 that there was a "need" for the filters and that he had seen "no data" suggesting the filters were harmful, according to the complaint.

Despite Zuckerberg's conclusion, The proposal received widespread support, including from Mosseri, the lawsuit said. Karina Newton, Instagram's head of policy; the head of Facebook; Fidji Simo and Margaret Gould Stewart, Meta's vice president of product design. (Simo and Mosseri at other times bemoaned Meta's lack of investment in wellness initiatives and lack of a "road map of work that shows we care about wellness," according to the lawsuit.)

Stewart first floated the idea of turning off the beauty filters, citing recommendations from academics and Meta's outside advisers, adding in an email that Newton had strong backing from departments including "comms, marketing [and] policy."

But after Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth brought the issue to Zuckerberg's attention, Zuckerberg scrapped the plan and allowed the filters to remain in place, according to the complaint.

Stewart later wrote to Zuckerberg, worried that his decision to disable filters would come back to haunt the company.

"I respect that and I will support your request," Stewart was quoted as saying in the complaint, "but I would like to state for the record that I don't think the call that was made at risk was the right one. . . . I hope that years from now we will feel good about the decision we made here."

In response to the newly unsealed communications, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said such image filters are commonly used in the industry.

"While filters exist on every major social platform and smartphone camera, Meta directly prohibits cosmetic surgery, skin discoloration or extreme weight loss," Stone said. "We clearly note when filtering is used and work to pre-review these rules and the impact before they go live."

Stone adds that it offers 30 tools to support teens and families, including screen time limits and the option to remove the number of likes from posts. (In redacted portions of the complaint, the Massachusetts lawsuit alleges that the experiment to remove like counts from posts, codenamed Project Daisy, was originally proposed as an app-wide default but later downgraded to a rare optional feature.)

At the time of the original Massachusetts lawsuit, one of several filed that day by several state attorneys general, Meta said it was committed to "providing teenagers with safe and positive experiences" and that states were disappointed. We do not work with Meta to develop industry standards.

Some executives are concerned about health.

In August 2021, one year after the beauty filter decision was made, Clegg admitted addiction, Citing staff suggestions to address issues of self-harm and bullying, it "pressured Zuckerberg to make additional investments to strengthen our position on wellness across the company." The complaint. At the time, the company was just weeks away from being attacked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen for bombshell allegations that Instagram knew its services could be harmful to teenagers.

In September, Haugen's anonymous allegations sparked intense scrutiny of Instagram. Haugen revealed her identity in October, but Mosseri wrote to another Meta product executive that same month citing Clegg's proposal, saying he was "really concerned" about his health but had made little progress.

Zuckerberg allegedly remained silent on Clegg's proposal, prompting Clegg to reiterate his concerns to Zuckerberg in November. Finally, Zuckerberg responded bluntly that Meta's chief financial officer, Susan Li, "was too restrictive to meet staffing demand," the lawsuit alleges.

After product executive David Ginsberg emailed Zuckerberg in 2019 saying the company's services were having a negative impact on people's health, Li responded similarly on Zuckerberg's behalf. Ginsberg's addiction; In response to social comparison and isolation, he proposed hiring more engineers to build better health devices, but Li responded that "Meta's leadership team refused to fund this program."

Zuckerberg's rejection of opportunities to invest more in his well-being reflects his data-centric approach to management, former Facebook engineering director and whistleblower Arturo Bejar said last week, when he stepped up his allegations that he repeatedly ignored internal warnings about Instagram. Dangers of the app for teenagers

Bejar, who testified before U.S. lawmakers this week about the dangers of Instagram, told CNN on Wednesday that he was not part of the beauty filter decision-making but spoke to senior officials who conducted internal research on the issue and others.

"My understanding is that Mark is trying to prove that because someone is using a filter, it affects how they perceive themselves," Bejar said.

"Everybody I've talked to locally about this case is like ... Mark's level of evidence is too high to take the job seriously," Bejar added. "I think that's an impossible standard."

on Wednesday, Stone says Meta has "a strong central team that oversees youth well-being across the company, and has built technology and teams that can move quickly and efficiently to implement new improvements across specific apps."

The technicians are dancing.


Other new allegations in the complaint allege that Meta exploited the psychology of teenage brains and set personal goals for the company to increase user time on Instagram.

In a 2020 internal presentation discussed in the complaint, Instagram comments on teens' desire for "newness" and "search for novelty." A 2020 internal filing discussed how followers and "confirmation [that] acceptance [that] acceptance [that] acceptance [that] dopamine hit" can satisfy teens' desire for "novelty-seeking." ] are huge rewards for teenagers.”

Tech advocacy groups slammed Zuckerberg on Wednesday after the internal communications emerged.

"The unreleased documents demonstrate that Mark Zuckerberg has no interest in protecting anyone's privacy or safety. The rot goes to the top," said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.

Zamaan Qureshi, co-president of It For Us, a youth-led design initiative that pushes for social media product change and regulation, said in unsealed documents that senior Meta executives sometimes face the same obstacles as rank-and-file employees. . I did.

"Clegg's comments follow precedent and practice at Meta, which has repeatedly shown staff underinvest in wellbeing tools, despite the research," Qureshi said. “Now we know that even senior leaders can't reach Zuckerberg.