The Albany Gazette - Meta knew teen safety tools were ineffective, witnesses testify

With more than three billion users around the world, Meta is fending off accusations by the coalition of US states that it deliberately designed its products to hook children and gather their data while misleading the public.

The trial entered its second week on Monday and is expected to last through late September.

Internal Meta documents shown to jurors said that Take a Break, which allows users to set reminders to stop scrolling, reached an adoption rate of 1.8 percent, while Quiet Mode, which silences late-night notifications, reached 8.7 percent.

Under questioning from state lawyers on Tuesday, Francesco Fogu, Meta's director of product design at Instagram, said he could not confirm numbers, but conceded that the company "knew adoption rates would be lower" when tools were not turned on by default.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide the case using the jury's verdict as guidance, appeared stunned that Fogu was unaware of the internal data.

US states will seek around $200 billion in penalties against Meta, and a court loss could force fundamental changes to its business model and send shockwaves through the industry.

Fogu was occasionally combative during questioning by a lawyer for the states. Asked whether Meta wanted to prevent some data from being made public, he responded: "Who's Meta? Me?"

Two former employees also testified that Take a Break and Quiet Mode were not effective.

"In my experience, 'Take a Break' is a feature that's designed to fail," Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, testified last week.

George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on safety features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, said Monday that adoption rates for those features were "very low and disappointing" and just "a drop in the ocean."

He painted Meta's leadership as uninterested in meaningfully boosting their use.

Leadership did not approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for younger teens, which held down adoption because the setting was hard to find in the app, Volichenko said.

Switching the safety features on by default would have caused a "notable negative impact" on user engagement, he said.

Meta's business model revolves around selling advertising, and the company earns more when users spend more time on its apps.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri is expected to take the stand Tuesday afternoon. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to testify, according to court documents.

(M.Scott--TAG)