The head of Instagram is the first high-profile exec to testify in the latest social media addiction trial.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri took the stand in Meta’s latest trial over social media addiction and children’s privacy Tuesday. During his testimony, Mosseri said that it was “news to me” that Instagram employees were told by a company lawyer to “limit” certain types of data they presented to the executive as part of their work on teen safety.
Mosseri appeared as part of a high-profile trial between Meta and attorneys general from dozens of states. Lawyers for the states have said that Meta intentionally tried to “hook” kids onto its platform despite internal research that showed its apps were harming young users.
One bit of internal research that surfaced during the trial Tuesday was from a 2023 slide deck prepared by Instagram designers and others about teen safety on the app. The deck indicated that content related to suicide, self injury and eating disorders had a “disproportionately large teen audience” that was two and half times bigger for teens than adults. It also indicated that content deemed “non-recommendable” to teens was being viewed by teens at a rate that was 1.5 times higher than adults.
A lawyer for the company later told Instagram employees working on the presentation to remove those stats in order to “limit” Mosseri’s “exposure to this information,” according to messages shared during the trial. On the stand Tuesday, Mosseri said that he has never participated in a conversation about moderating his own access to information. “I’m not a legal expert, so I’m not sure what the reasons might be for removing information from presentations before they get to me, but [I’m] not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” he said. “I think that my understanding is if there are legal implications of certain work, that lawyers review the material.” He described the lawyers’ role as ensuring the accuracy of documents and that “they make sense, particularly when it’s about whether or not something we’re doing complies with the law.”
Mosseri’s comments came after Instagram’s Director of Product Design, Francesco Fogu, testified about the July 2023 presentation and the conversations around what statistics to include in it. Fogu said he was “surprised” because he had never before been told to “hide data from leadership.” He was ultimately permitted to communicate the data to Instagram’s leaders “vocally,” he said. He added that the data was still available to executives because it was detailed in reports that were linked within the presentation. Later, during cross-examination from Meta’s lawyer, he said the presentation was successful because it was the “catalyst” for the creation of Instagram’s teen accounts.
One feature that repeatedly came up during Mosseri and Fogu’s testimony was Instagram’s “take a break” tool that can remind users to stop scrolling. Only 1.8 percent of Instagram users initially opted into the feature after it was introduced in 2021, according to data from Meta. Fogu, who still works at Meta, repeatedly said he was unsure about the accuracy of that statistic.
At one point, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked Fogu whether he knew what the highest adoption rate for the feature had ever been. Fogu said he didn’t. “You’re the head of this and you don’t know what the highest it’s ever been,” she asked. “I do not create the dashboards for collecting data. I do not read data. That’s not my job. I just trust my team,” he said. “And yet, even though you have to trust them, even though you have to design things, you have no idea what those numbers are as you sit here today,” Rogers said.
Fogu wasn’t the first witness to testify about “take a break.” The jury also heard from a former data scientist at Meta, George Volichenko, who said the feature had a “very low and disappointing” adoption rate among teens after it was introduced in 2022. Volichenko said that early findings showed only .165 percent of teens opted to take a 10-minute break from Instagram, though adoption later increased to .2 percent. He described the feature as “easy to dismiss.”
Mosseri was also pressed about “take a break” and its adoption rate. The Instagram chief seemed to be frustrated with the focus on the feature. “This is one feature with a disappointingly low usage rate, which has been significantly improved,” he said. Instagram’s teen accounts, which are now mandatory for teens under 16, have time limits enabled by default, Mosseri pointed out. “There are many features that are effective, there are many features that are ineffective,” he said. “One in 50 people today will post a photo or a video to Instagram. That’s a 2% participation rate.”
Mosseri is the first high-profile Meta executive to testify in the trial, which could have a lasting impact on Meta. Lawyers for the states are seeking penalties as high as $1.4 trillion and hoping to force the company to change aspects of how its apps are designed. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to appear, along with other current and former employees. Mosseri’s testimony will continue Wednesday.
