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Plaintiffs allege Meta hid product risks from users and

authorities

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Meta accused of ineffective youth safety features and

prioritizing growth over safety

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Meta opposed unsealing of internal documents in court

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Meta allegedly ignored valid research findings on mental

health

impacts

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TikTok allegedly influenced National PTA to publicly

support its

safety claims

By Jeff Horwitz

Nov 22 (Reuters) - Meta shut down internal research into

the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after

finding causal evidence that its products harmed users' mental

health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by

U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media

platforms.

In a 2020 research project code-named "Project Mercury,"

Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to

gauge the effect of "deactivating" Facebook and Instagram,

according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the

company's disappointment, "people who stopped using Facebook for

a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety,

loneliness and social comparison," internal documents said.

Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional

research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and

internally declared that the negative study findings were

tainted by the "existing media narrative" around the company.

Privately, however, staff assured Nick Clegg, Meta's

then-head of global public policy, that the conclusions of the

research were valid.

"The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social

comparison," (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher

allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet

about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry

"doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that

info to themselves."

Despite Meta's own work documenting a causal link between

its products and negative mental health effects, the filing

alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify

whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.

In a statement Saturday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the

study was stopped because its methodology was flawed and that it

worked diligently to improve the safety of its products.

"The full record will show that for over a decade, we have

listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and

made real changes to protect teens," he said.

PLAINTIFFS ALLEGE PRODUCT RISKS WERE HIDDEN

The allegation of Meta burying evidence of social media harms is

just one of many in a late Friday filing by Motley Rice, a law

firm suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat

on behalf of school districts around the country. Broadly, the

plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the

internally recognized risks of their products from users,

parents and teachers.

TikTok, Google and Snapchat did not immediately respond to a

request for comment.

Allegations against Meta and its rivals include tacitly

encouraging children below the age of 13 to use their platforms,

failing to address child sexual abuse content and seeking to

expand the use of social media products by teenagers while they

were at school. The plaintiffs also allege that the platforms

attempted to pay child-focused organizations to defend the

safety of their products in public.

In one instance, TikTok sponsored the National PTA and then

internally boasted about its ability to influence the

child-focused organization. Per the filing, TikTok officials

said the PTA would "do whatever we want going forward in the

fall... (t)hey'll announce things publicly(,), (t)heir CEO will do

press statements for us."

By and large, however, the allegations against the other

social media platforms are less detailed than those against

Meta. The internal documents cited by the plaintiffs allege:

1. Meta intentionally designed its youth safety features to

be

ineffective and rarely used, and blocked testing of safety

features that it feared might be harmful to growth.

2. Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting to

traffic

people for sex before it would remove them from its platform,

which a document described as "a very, very, very high strike

threshold."

3. Meta recognized that optimizing its products to increase

teen

engagement resulted in serving them more harmful content, but

did so anyway.

4. Meta stalled internal efforts to prevent child predators

from

contacting minors for years due to growth concerns, and

pressured safety staff to circulate arguments justifying its

decision not to act.

5. In a text message in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that he

wouldn't

say that child safety was his top concern "when I have a number

of other areas I'm more focused on like building the metaverse."

Zuckerberg also shot down or ignored requests by Clegg to better

fund child safety work.

Meta's Stone disputed these allegations, saying the

company's teen safety measures are effective and that the

company's current policy is to remove accounts as soon as they

are flagged for sex trafficking.

He said the suit misrepresents its efforts to build safety

features for teens and parents, and called its safety work

"broadly effective."

"We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on

cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions," Stone said.

The underlying Meta documents cited in the filing are not

public, and Meta is opposing their unsealing.

A hearing regarding the filing is set for January 26 in

Northern California District Court.