The newly unsealed communications in the lawsuit — filed originally by Massachusetts last month in a state court — allegedly show how Zuckerberg ignored or shut down top executives, including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 33 million teens who use Instagram in the United States.
Stewart had first pitched the idea to disable beauty filters, citing recommendations by academics and Meta’s outside advisors, while Newton wrote an email adding it had strong backing from departments including “comms, marketing policy,” the lawsuit said. Stone added that Meta offers 30 tools to support teens and families, including the ability to set screen-time limits and the option to remove like counts from posts.
Li responded similarly on Zuckerberg’s behalf after another product executive, David Ginsberg, emailed Zuckerberg in 2019 highlighting internal and external research suggesting that the company’s services were having a negative impact on people’s well-being. Ginsburg proposed hiring more engineers to build well-being tools to respond to addiction, social comparison and loneliness, but Li “responded that Meta’s leadership team declined to fund this initiative,” according to the complaint.
“All the people that I’ve talked to internally about this were like… Mark’s level of proof, in order to be able to take the work seriously and act on it, is too high,” Bejar added. “I think it’s an impossible standard to meet.”