Instagram boss Adam Mosseri took the stand Tuesday at Meta’s latest trial over charges of social media addiction and protecting children’s privacy. During his testimony, Mosseri said it was “news to me” that a company lawyer asked Instagram employees 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 lawsuit between Meta and attorneys general from dozens of states. Attorneys for the states said Meta intentionally tried to “hook” children on its platform, despite internal research showing its apps harmed young users.
Internal research that surfaced during the trial Tuesday came from a 2023 slideshow prepared by Instagram designers and others about teen safety on the app. The presentation said content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders had a “disproportionate adolescent audience” that was two and a half times larger for adolescents than for adults. It also reported that content deemed “unsuitable” for teens was viewed by teens at a rate 1.5 times higher than adults.
A lawyer for the company then asked Instagram employees working on the presentation to remove these statistics in order to “limit” Mosseri’s “exposure to this information,” according to messages shared during the trial. On the stand Tuesday, Mosseri said he had never participated in a conversation about moderating his own access to information. “I’m not a legal expert, so I’m not sure what reasons might justify removing information from presentations before it gets to me, but (I’m) not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” he said. “My understanding is that if there are legal implications to certain work, lawyers need to review the material.” He described the role of lawyers as ensuring that documents are accurate and that “they make sense, especially when it comes to whether or not something we do complies with the law.”
Mosseri’s comments came after Instagram’s director of product design, Francesco Fogu, testified about the July 2023 presentation and conversations about which metrics to include. Fogu said he was “surprised” because he had never been asked before to “hide data from executives.” He was eventually allowed to “vocally” communicate the data to Instagram executives, he said. He added that the data was still available to executives as it was detailed in reports linked in the presentation. Later, during cross-examination by Meta’s lawyer, he said the presentation was a success because it was the “catalyst” for the creation of the teen Instagram accounts.
One feature that came up repeatedly during Mosseri and Fogu’s testimony was Instagram’s “pause” tool that can remind users to stop scrolling. According to Meta data, only 1.8% of Instagram users initially opted for this feature after its introduction in 2021. Fogu, who still works at Meta, has repeatedly stated that he is unsure of the accuracy of this statistic.
At one point, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked Fogu if he knew what the highest adoption rate ever had been for the feature. Fogu said no. “You’re at the helm of all this and you don’t know what the highest level was,” she asked. “I don’t create dashboards to collect data. I don’t 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 when you sit here today,” Rogers said.
Fogu was not the first witness to talk about “taking 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 its introduction in 2022. Volichenko said early findings showed that only 0.165% of teens chose to take a 10-minute break from Instagram, although adoption later increased to 0.2%. He described the feature as “easy to dismiss.”
Mosseri was also pressed on “taking a break” and its adoption rate. The Instagram chief seemed frustrated with the focus on this feature. “This is a feature that has had disappointing usage rates and has been significantly improved,” he said. Teen Instagram accounts, now required for teens under 16, have duration limits enabled by default, Mosseri pointed out. “Many features are effective, and many features are ineffective,” he said. “Today, one in 50 people will post a photo or video on Instagram. That’s a participation rate of 2%.”
Mosseri is the first high-level Meta executive to testify at the trial, which could have a lasting impact on Meta. State lawyers are seeking penalties of up to $1.4 trillion and hope to force the company to change aspects of its app design. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to appear, along with other current and former employees. Mosseri’s testimony will continue Wednesday.
