Instagram admits in court that it promoted little-used safety tools for minors

With more than three billion users worldwide, the social media giant is part of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp.

Mark Zuckerberg’s organization is defending its position against accusations from a coalition of 29 US states that the company deliberately designed its products to hook children and collect their data under false pretenses.

The states are asking for nearly $200 billion in fines against Meta. A court defeat could force fundamental changes to the company’s business model and shake the entire industry.

The trial entered its second week on Monday and is expected to continue until the end of September.

A lawyer from the Colorado Attorney General’s office questioned Instagram boss Adam Mosseri about the low use of the tools known as “Take a Break” and “Quiet Mode,” launched in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

While “Take a Break” allows users to set reminders to stop scrolling, “Quiet Mode” silences nightly notifications.

When Mosseri was asked if Meta had disclosed the low adoption rates of these tools – which do not exceed 2% of accounts – he admitted that the company did not.

However, he noted that these safety features were enabled by default on teen accounts, which include parental controls, and were released in 2024.

Mosseri couldn’t remember if Meta had ever disclosed the percentage of teen accounts that have parental controls turned on.

The person in charge of Instagram will continue testifying on Wednesday. Zuckerberg is also expected to testify, although it is unclear when.

Other witnesses have testified over the past week that the two protective tools were not effective. However, the head of one of Meta’s platforms rejected the idea that its adoption remains low.

“This is a feature with a disappointingly low usage rate that has since improved significantly,” he said.

“Disappointing” adoption

Meta knew that its tools to protect teenagers on Instagram were ineffective, according to witnesses.

Internal Meta documents that were shown to the jury indicated that the “Take a Break” feature reached an adoption rate of 1.8%, while “Quiet Mode” reached 8.7%.

Under questioning by the states’ lawyers on Tuesday, Francesco Fogu, director of product design at Instagram, said he could not confirm the figures.

However, he admitted that the company “knew adoption rates would be lower” when the tools were not activated by default.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide the case based on the jury’s verdict, seemed surprised that Fogu did not know the internal data.

Two other former employees also testified that the tools were ineffective.

“In my experience, ‘Take a Break’ is a feature designed to fail,” Arturo Bejar, former director of engineering at Meta, stated last week.

George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on security features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, said on Monday that adoption rates for those features were “very low and disappointing” and portrayed Meta leadership as uninterested in boosting their use.

According to Volichenko, management did not approve turning on silent mode by default for younger teens, which slowed its adoption because the setting was difficult to find in the app.

Enabling security features by default would have caused a “notable negative impact” on user interaction, he added.

Meta’s business model revolves around selling advertising, and the company earns more when users spend more time in its apps.