Meta has come under renewed criticism in the US after a former head of security said accounts linked to human sex trafficking could have violated its rules up to 16 times before the company banned them.
Meta has come under renewed criticism in the US after a former head of security said accounts linked to human sex trafficking could have violated its rules up to 16 times before the company banned them.
This is reported by The Verge, citing unedited materials from a lawsuit regarding child safety on social media. Former Meta manager Vaishnavi Jayukumar said during questioning that the company actually had a «17-strike» policy: after 16 recorded violations related to prostitution or sexual exploitation, the account was blocked only on the 17th. In her opinion, this is a «very high threshold» even by industry standards.
The lawsuit also alleges that Instagram has long lacked a dedicated button or form for reporting child sexual abuse material. Jayukumar said she has repeatedly raised the issue internally, but was told that creating and processing such complaints would require too many resources.
Some of the issues revolve around Meta’s decisions regarding teens. In 2019, the lawsuit says, the company considered making all teen accounts private by default to reduce spam. The idea was reportedly scrapped after the growth team warned of a severe hit to engagement. Meta eventually began automatically setting new teen accounts to private.
The documents also cite internal research that found that hiding like counts could make users «significantly less likely to feel bad» about their posts, but the company backed away from the move after assessing the impact on Facebook’s metrics. It’s a similar story with beauty filters, which were brought back in 2020, even though researchers warned that the effects were causing girls to have body image issues.
It’s all part of a broader lawsuit against Meta, TikTok, Google and Snapchat filed by school districts, attorneys general and parents across the US, accusing the platforms of creating «addictive and dangerous» products and contributing to a mental health crisis among teenagers. Meta has previously been criticized for its impact on children, but the company has publicly insisted it sees no clear cause-and-effect relationship.
In response to the new allegations, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the lawsuit is based on «selective quotes and misinterpretations.» He said the company has been listening to parents «for over a decade,» researching sensitive topics, and implementing changes like separate teen accounts with built-in restrictions and parental controls. However, the final assessment of Meta’s role in this case will be made by the court.
dev.ua previously reported how Meta halted an internal study into Facebook’s impact on mental health after receiving evidence of harm from its products. This was revealed in the unredacted materials of a lawsuit filed by US school districts against Meta and other social networks.
