Instagram Head Adam Mosseri Testifies in Meta Child Safety Trial
Key Takeaways
- •Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief since 2018, testified for California and three other states in a lawsuit alleging Meta designed products to addict children.
- •Evidence presented in court showed that only 1.8% of teenagers had turned on Instagram’s optional “Take a Break” feature before it was made default in late 2024.
- •Mosseri said the feature offered some help but not as much as Meta had hoped, and he argued that its early adoption rate was no longer relevant after the default change.
- •Prosecutors introduced internal messages suggesting Meta lawyers wanted to limit the data shown to Mosseri to reduce his litigation exposure.
- •The trial is expected to last about six weeks, and the states say they may seek nearly $200 billion in damages and changes.
On Tuesday in Oakland federal court, Adam Mosseri defended Instagram’s safety record and challenged the significance a state prosecutor assigned to the limited use of a feature designed to interrupt prolonged teen usage, according to the Associated Press.
Mosseri is a central witness for California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, four of the 29 states that sued Meta in 2023, alleging that the company knowingly designed features to addict children. The testimony is part of a broader case in which the states are trying to show not just that teen-safety tools existed, but how widely they were used and what company leaders were told about them.
Jason Slothouber, a senior prosecutor with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, questioned him for about an hour. Mosseri has led Instagram since 2018 and is scheduled to return to the stand Wednesday.
Take a Break feature worked for the few who switched it on
The Take a Break feature sends a pop-up after a user has spent a set amount of time in the app, suggesting that they stop scrolling. Until late 2024, the feature was optional, meaning teens had to go into settings and turn it on themselves.
An internal document admitted into evidence showed that at one point, 1.8% of teenagers had the feature switched on, according to NPR. Around the time it launched, Mosseri wrote in a blog post that more than 90% of the people who turned it on kept it running. The first figure reflects how many teens chose the feature. The second reflects its performance among that small group.
Meta published the second figure but not the first.
Mosseri testified that the pop-ups “helped, but not nearly as much as we hoped.” Meta made the feature the default on teen accounts in late 2024, the same year it introduced those accounts, and he said the question of early uptake was “entirely moot” by then.
Slothouber noted that the change came after the states had already filed suit.
Meta lawyers flagged Mosseri’s litigation exposure
Slothouber also presented Mosseri with internal communications about a presentation his staff were preparing on the problematic content teenagers encounter. Those communications showed that Meta’s lawyers had advised product designers to limit what data Mosseri would see in order to reduce his “litigation exposure.”
Mosseri said, “I wasn’t aware of this discussion, but it makes sense that the people putting the document together would have wanted to make sure that the information in the document was accurate.” Slothouber then raised the question of whether someone who deals with numbers every day understands better than a lawyer what numbers should be shown to him.
Earlier the same day, Instagram design director Francesco Fogu acknowledged that data was removed from a 2023 slide showing that teenage users encountered 1.5 times more bullying, suicide, hate, nudity and violent content than adults. That line of questioning underscores how the states are pressing Meta on what executives saw versus what was withheld or softened in internal presentations, an issue that could matter as the trial turns to the company’s knowledge and disclosures.
The states are building a broader case around what Meta knew and disclosed
The trial began last week and is expected to last about six weeks in total. An eight-person jury will return an advisory verdict, while US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide liability and determine any penalties or ordered changes.
The states have indicated they could seek close to $200 billion. The remaining 25 states are scheduled to go to trial later, and Meta also faces separate state court actions, including one underway in Tennessee.
As Cryptopolitan reported, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent earlier this year and ordered them to pay $6 million to a woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.
This month, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a youth mental health fund after the state argued that its platforms were a public nuisance. Some legal specialists compare the litigation to the tobacco cases of the 1990s.
