{"id":6944,"date":"2025-11-24T21:18:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/zuckerberg-meta-teens-safety\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T21:18:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:18:25","slug":"zuckerberg-meta-teens-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/zuckerberg-meta-teens-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg Said Child Safety Was Less Important Than \u201cBuilding the Metaverse\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As globe-spanning megacorps go, Meta is making the rest of them look like amateurs.<\/p>\n

On Friday, a brief filed as part of an unprecedented lawsuit against four social media giants was made available to the public. Though TikTok, Google, and Snapchat are also implicated, the allegations against Meta are by far the most detailed, containing some of the most damaging charges ever levied at a social media company. <\/p>\n

The filing lists over 1,800 plaintiffs, ranging from parents to school boards and state attorneys general who all alleged that Meta has engaged in a \u201cbroad pattern of deceit\u201d to hide serious harms the company knowingly unleashed on underaged users.<\/p>\n

There are seven key allegations, each more heinous than the last. In short, the brief alleges that Meta intentionally designed youth safety features to be ineffective, or else completely ignored underaged users\u2019 wellbeing in order to prioritize teen engagement \u2014 a key pillar<\/a> for its outsize profits.<\/p>\n

According to Time<\/em><\/a>, which filed a motion to unseal the trial records, Instagram\u2019s AI moderation tool deliberately overlooked child sexual abuse and eating disorder content, and the platform was left without an easy way to manually report such abuse, unlike for minor issues like spam. Particularly damning is the allegation that Instagram provided a ludicrous 17 strikes system for accounts caught participating in the \u201ctrafficking of humans for sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court brief doesn\u2019t mince words, arguing that the purposeful quashing \u2014 and in some cases outright destruction \u2014 of child safety guidelines ran all the way to the top. Per Reuters<\/em><\/a>, which viewed the brief, Meta\u2019s billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg was keenly aware of the issues as early as 2017, choosing to focus on more trivial things instead.<\/p>\n

In a text message recovered by the plaintiff\u2019s attorneys, for instance, Zuckerberg allegedly said child safety wasn\u2019t his top concern \u201cwhen I have a number of other areas I\u2019m more focused on, like building the metaverse.\u201d (Longtime Meta-watchers will remember the metaverse as Zuckerberg\u2019s failed virtual reality platform<\/a>, which has cost the company over $46 billion<\/a> since 2021.)<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/em> notes that as Zuckerberg forged ahead on the metaverse, he actively shot down pleas from Meta\u2019s then-head of global public policy, Nick Clegg, to allocate more resources to child safety.<\/p>\n

In some cases, the brief alleges, Zuckerberg didn\u2019t just ignore child safety, but actively circumvented it. For example, after a 2018 internal study found that 40 percent of American children aged 9-12 used Instagram daily \u2014 a violation of the platforms\u2019 minimum age policy of 13 \u2014 the CEO <\/strong>is said to have directed the company to deliberately target preteens anyway.<\/p>\n

At this point, Meta is alleged to have begun using location data to push notifications to students in schools, likely trying to boost underage engagement while class was in session. In the background, the company\u2019s research teams began studying the psychology of \u201ctweens,\u201d and developed proposals for new features for \u201cusers as young as 5-10,\u201d according to Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh good, we\u2019re going after <13 year olds now?\u201d one employee allegedly wrote in an internal communication. \u201cZuck has been talking about that for a while\u2026 targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we\u2019re seriously saying \u2018we have to hook them young\u2019 here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previn Warren, the plaintiff\u2019s co-lead attorney, echoed the big tobacco analogy in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta has designed social media products and platforms that it is aware are addictive to kids, and they\u2019re aware that those addictions lead to a whole host of serious mental health issues,\u201d Warren said. \u201cLike tobacco, this is a situation where there are dangerous products that were marketed to kids. They did it anyway, because more usage meant more profits for the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Meta: <\/strong>Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads<\/a>
<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Mark Zuckerberg Said Child Safety Was Less Important Than \u201cBuilding the Metaverse\u201d<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As globe-spanning megacorps go, Meta is making the rest of them look like amateurs. On Friday, a brief filed as part of an unprecedented lawsuit against four social media giants…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3842,189,2332,3936,2248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-future-society","category-meta","category-metaverse","category-the-industrialists","category-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}