Instagram head Mosseri says few teens knew of safety feature in addiction trial

• On Tuesday in Oakland federal court, Adam Mosseri was on the defense of Instagram’s safety record, challenging the significance that a state prosecutor gave to the limited use of a feature designed to break up prolonged usage by teens, according to the Associated Press.

He is a central witness for California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, four of the 29 states that sued Meta in 2023 alleging it knowingly designed features to addict children.

Jason Slothouber, a senior prosecutor with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, questioned him for about an hour. Mosseri has run Instagram since 2018 and returns to the stand Wednesday.

Take a Break feature worked for the few who switched it on

The Take a Break feature sends a pop-up once someone has been in the app for a set stretch of time, suggesting they stop scrolling. Until late 2024 it was optional, so a teenager had to go into settings and turn it on.

An internal document admitted into evidence showed that at one point, 1.8% of teenagers had it switched on, per NPR. Around the time it launched, Mosseri wrote in a blog post that more than 90% of the people who turned it on kept it running. The first number indicates the amount of teenagers who chose it. The second indicates its performance among that small group.

Meta published the second and not the first.

The pop-ups “helped, but not nearly as much as we hoped,” Mosseri testified. Meta made the feature the default on teen accounts in late 2024, the same year it introduced those accounts, and he said the question of early uptake was “entirely moot” by then.

Jason Slothouber, the Colorado prosecutor questioning him, noted the change came after the states had already sued.

Meta lawyers flagged Mosseri’s litigation exposure

Slothouber also put to Mosseri a set of internal communications about a presentation his staff were preparing on the problematic content teenagers encounter. Those communications record that Meta’s lawyers had advised the product designers to limit what data Mosseri would see, in order to check his “litigation exposure.”

According to Mosseri, “I wasn’t aware of this discussion, but it makes sense that the people putting the document together would have wanted to make sure that the information in the document was accurate.” Then Slothouber raised the question of whether the person who is dealing with numbers every day understands better what numbers should be shown to him than a lawyer.

Earlier the same day, Instagram design director Francesco Fogu acknowledged that data was removed from a 2023 slide showing teenage users encountered 1.5 times more bullying, suicide, hate, nudity and violent content than adults.

The states are building a broader case around what Meta knew and disclosed

The trial began last week and is expected to run about six weeks in total. An eight-person jury returns an advisory verdict, but US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decides liability and would set any penalties or ordered changes.

The states have indicated they could seek close to $200 billion. The remaining 25 states go to trial later, and Meta faces separate state court actions including one underway in Tennessee.

As Cryptopolitan reported, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent earlier this year, ordering them to pay $6 million to a woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.

This month a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a youth mental health fund after the state argued its platforms were a public nuisance. Some legal specialists compare the litigation to the tobacco cases of the 1990s.

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