Meta allegedly knew that some of its tools designed to protect teenagers on Instagram were largely ineffective, witnesses have told a court in California.
The testimony came as 29 US states accuse the social media company of misleading the public about the dangers posed by its platforms and deliberately designing products that encourage children to spend more time online.
The trial, which entered its second week on Monday, is expected to continue until late September.
Internal Meta documents presented to jurors showed that the “Take a Break” feature, which allows users to receive reminders to stop scrolling, had an adoption rate of just 1.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, “Quiet Mode”, which silences late-night notifications, recorded an adoption rate of 8.7 per cent.
Under questioning by lawyers representing the states on Tuesday, Francesco Fogu, Meta’s director of product design at Instagram, said he could not confirm the figures but acknowledged that the company knew adoption would be lower when the safety features were not activated by default.
Meta has more than three billion users globally and faces allegations that it prioritised engagement and advertising revenue over the safety of younger users.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will rule on the case with guidance from the jury’s verdict, appeared surprised that Fogu was unaware of the internal data presented in court.
The US states are seeking about $200 billion in penalties against Meta. A ruling against the company could also result in significant changes to its business practices and have wider implications for the social media industry.
Former employees criticise safety tools
Two former Meta employees also testified that Instagram’s safety features were ineffective.
Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, told the court last week that, based on his experience, the “Take a Break” feature was “designed to fail”.
George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on Instagram’s safety features in 2022 and 2023, described the adoption rates for the tools as “very low and disappointing”.
He said the figures represented little more than “a drop in the ocean”.
Volichenko also testified that Meta’s leadership appeared uninterested in significantly increasing the use of the safety features.
According to him, the company’s leadership declined to activate Quiet Mode by default for younger teenagers, limiting its adoption because the setting was difficult for users to find within the app.
He said activating the feature by default would have had a “notable negative impact” on user engagement.
Meta’s business model relies heavily on advertising revenue, meaning the company can generate more revenue when users spend longer periods on its platforms.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri is expected to testify during the trial, while Meta founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to appear as a witness, according to court documents.