Filings provide additional evidence from discovery, which is the evidentiary sharing stage of litigation that precedes trial. For example, Meta’s own researchers seemed to acknowledge that the company’s policies were bad for young users, with one activist likening Instagram’s algorithmic methods to street-level drug dealing.
A set of legal documents recently revealed that Instagram and Facebook owner Meta adopted an unusually lenient “17x” policy on accounts belonging to sex traffickers, allowing them to request and share prostitution-related content up to 16 times before being suspended on the 17th and final “strike.”
According to Mercury Newsthe alleged sexual content policy is detailed in a court filing for plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against Meta and several other companies, including Google-owned YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Many plaintiffs, ranging from parents, students and teachers to state-level agencies, initially filed separate claims, which have since been consolidated through multidistrict litigation.
“Despite making billions of dollars – and its leaders being among the richest people in the world – META simply refuses to invest resources in keeping children safe.”
The filing alleges that Meta has made “outright lies” about the potential dangers of its products, thereby “preventing even the most vigilant administrators, teachers, parents, and students from understanding and addressing the dangers posed by Facebook and Instagram.”
The attorneys cited evidence from internal company communications and research reports, as well as affidavits from current and former employees. Mercury Press News notes that the filing contains extensive references to evidence that is not yet available to the public or the press and, as such, cannot be easily verified.
Although detailed in the filing, it is claimed that Instagram’s account recommendation feature shared the profiles of at least 2 million children with adults looking for children. In total, more than 1 million “potentially inappropriate adults” were recommended to teen users in 2022.
Facebook’s similar recommendation feature, according to a Meta employee, is “responsible for 80% of adult/minor contact violations.”
Filings provide additional evidence from discovery, which is the evidentiary sharing stage of litigation that precedes trial. For example, Meta’s own researchers seemed to acknowledge that the company’s policies were bad for young users, with one activist likening Instagram’s algorithmic methods to street-level drug dealing.
“We’re basically pushers,” the employee reportedly said. “Teens get hooked regardless of how it makes them feel.”
Recently filed court documents also include testimony from Instagram’s former head of safety and wellness, Vishnavi Jayakumar, who described Meta’s alleged “17x” policy.
“You can have 16 violations for prostitution and sexual exploitation, and on the 17th violation your account will be suspended,” he said. “By any measure across the industry, (it was) a very high strike range.”
Giacomer, filings show, was unhappy with Meta’s approach to safety. For example, Instagram has a zero-tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation content, yet offers no easy way for users to report potentially criminal content. Giacomer raised the issue several times, but was told it would be too difficult to fix. At the same time, Giacomer noted, Instagram promoted spam, intellectual property violations, and firearms, as did other crime reporting.
The lawsuit alleges that Metta has long been aware of these shortcomings. In 2020, while trying to determine how privacy controls and teen opt-out policies might affect development, Meta received recommendations from separate policy, legal, communications, privacy and wellness teams, all suggesting that it would be better to make teen accounts private by default.
The advice was later shelved, possibly due to concerns that limiting “unsolicited conversations” could, in fact, lead to a decrease in engagement among young users.
The recommendation was only implemented in 2024, when enhanced privacy settings became the default for all teen accounts.
Sources
In court circles, it has been alleged that Meta downplayed the risks to children and misled the public
Lawsuit: Metta allowed sexually suggestive posts on Instagram because it profited over child safety
