A number of states are looking into whether Meta, formerly known as Facebook, knowingly promoted its Instagram social media app, knowing that the service caused mental and emotional harm. The bipartisan group of state attorneys general include California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. The group, led among others by by Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts, said the investigation will examine whether the company violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.
“Facebook, now Meta, has failed to protect young people on its platforms and instead chose to ignore or, in some cases, double down on known manipulations that pose a real threat to physical and mental health, exploiting children in the interest of profit,” Healey said.
Doug Peterson, the attorney general for Nebraska and another leader in the probe, said in a tweet that “when social media platforms treat our kids as mere commodities to manipulate for longer screen time engagement & data extraction, it becomes imperative for state attorneys general to engage our investigative authority under our consumer protection laws.”
Meta came out with a statement, strongly disputing the claims made by the state attorneys general against Instagram, the New York Times reported.
“These accusations are false and demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts,” the company said. “While challenges in protecting young people online impact the entire industry, we’ve led the industry in combating bullying and supporting people struggling with suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and eating disorders.”
A report in the Wall Street Journal claimed Facebook knew its service could have a harmful effect on some young people, and that it neither revealed its research on the matter, nor addressed the issue. Members of US Congress said after that they would look into the matter. Facebook refuted the claims and said many items taken out of its research were reported without context. Instagram nevertheless announced later that it would “nudge” teenagers to look at something else if the system found they were focusing too much on potentially harmful content.
Haugen and public interest groups have filed at least nine complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission claiming Meta mislead investors about its efforts to protect users from disinformation and hate, the New York Times noted. The Federal Trade Commission and dozens of states have filed antitrust lawsuits to break up Meta, and members of Congress said they want to create privacy, speech and antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.
Spanning tens of thousands of pages and gigabytes of data, the Facebook Papers show a company struggling to deal with many issues that come as a byproduct of its enormous scale and billions of users, spanning topics like misinformation, addiction and manipulation of users around the world. Much of the information came in the form of detailed reports investigating the issues, laid out by the company’s research division.
Meta has said the research efforts are aimed at addressing the issues they determine, with the aim of improving the company’s products and services.
