Instagram boss admits promoting little-used teen safety tool at Meta trial

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri acknowledged Tuesday that Meta promoted a teen safety tool as a success while knowing it was barely used. Mosseri, the first high-ranking Meta executive to testify in the ongoing trial in Oakland, California, admitted that the "Take a break" feature, which reminds users to pause their activity, had a low activation rate among minors.

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Yes, it was low.

During his testimony, Mosseri was confronted with a December 2021 blog post where he claimed that "over 90%" of teens who activated the reminders kept them. However, he conceded that "yes, it was low" when asked about the actual number of teens who activated the feature. He admitted that parents had no way of knowing that only "1 or 2%" of minors used the tool. Mosseri stated that Meta planned to grow the figure over time and that "most teenagers didn't want it," yet the company decided to activate it by default in 2024.

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No, because we planned to grow this figure over time.

Internal documents revealed that Meta limited notifications about these tools to "minimize the impact on the ecosystem," referring to user time spent on the app, which is crucial for advertising revenue. At the time of Mosseri's blog post, only one-third of minors were aware of the "Take a break" feature. Similarly, parental supervision tools were adopted by less than 1% of adolescents.

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Correct.

Mosseri defended himself against accusations of lying, even by omission, stating that he had publicly mentioned low activation rates without providing specific numbers. He asserted that the company's intention was to protect users, even if the initial uptake was minimal.

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There are thousands of statistics like that, we don't publish them all.