'Safety was someone else’s problem,' ex-Facebook VP says in teen social media trial

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former Facebook executive took the stand Thursday in a landmark civil trial over whether social media apps harm the mental health of children.

While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri have insisted their companies take seriously the mental health effects of their products on teen users, former Facebook vice president Brian Boylan testified the company’s safety team was kept in a “silo” and that it was never much of a priority during his 11-year tenure at the tech giant.

“From my experience, work around safety was someone else’s problem,” Boylan told the jury. “Keeping people safe was not important to Mark or the company.”

Boylan was hired by Facebook in 2009, and served in a variety of roles before quitting in 2020. Last year, he wrote a blog post titled “Deleting Facebook,” in which he addressed both leaving his job and ending his use of the popular social media app. Much of the post was aimed at Facebook’s role in world events, such as the genocide in Myanmar and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building. He called Facebook “a platform of division and death,” writing, “Meta’s tools are indeed building communities — but they are communities of distrust, hate, and division.”

This trial centers on a more prosaic topic: whether Instagram and YouTube played a significant role in causing or worsening the depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia of a single 20-year-old woman, the plaintiff known in court as Kaley GM. It is a bellwether trial that could be used to determine a massive settlement involving more than 1,600 plaintiffs who are suing Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok claiming they’ve caused a mental health crisis among teenagers.

Both TikTok and Snapchat reached confidential eleventh-hour settlements with Kaley, thus avoiding trial, at least for now. Kaley was never a big Facebook user; she did, however, begin watching YouTube at the age of 6, and created her first Instagram account when she was 9.

Up until now, social media companies have been shielded from mass torts by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which holds that platforms can’t be held liable for content created or spread by users. Plaintiffs in this bundle of lawsuits have employed a novel legal theory, accusing the tech giants of developing features like “infinite scroll,” autoplay, notifications and “beauty filters” that were designed to make their apps addictive — to maximize the time spent on the apps, and thus advertising revenue.

Both Zuckerberg and Mosseri pushed back on that argument. They insisted their goal was to make their apps good and valuable, so that users could enjoy them for many years to come. And if the amount of time users spend on his app went up, Zuckerberg said, that was simply because they were enjoying it. Mosseri said Instagram isn’t “clinically addictive.”

Boylan told a different story. He said the Facebook algorithm had been designed to keep people glued to the app.

“If growth is the goal, then the algorithm will dispassionately chase that goal,” Boylan testified. “These are incredibly sophisticated mechanisms. They are absolutely relentless in the pursuit of their goal. There’s not a moral algorithm. That’s not a thing.”

Under cross-examination by Meta attorney Phyllis Jones, Boylan clarified: “Algorithms definitely aren’t good or bad.”

Mosseri and Zuckerberg said teenagers are not a significant part of Meta’s audience because they have less disposable income and are therefore less valuable to advertisers. Boylan pushed back on that argument as well.

“The earlier that you have people using those products and building their network on those products, the more they will stay, the more they’re locked in to those products,” Boylan said.

Kaley’s attorney Mark Lanier showed the court a 2018 email from a top Facebook strategist acknowledging the company had “lost this teen generation” — teens like Kaley were not on Facebook — but saying the company still had “a shot at getting kids” by designing apps targeting preteens. One such product, Messenger Kids, was touted by Zuckerberg on Wednesday when he said he uses it to communicate with his children. Other apps, like Instagram for Kids, were discussed but never launched.

The trial continues Monday and is expected to wrap up sometime next month.

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