Zuckerberg considered changing how Meta studies social issues after research got it in trouble

One day after The Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster story about Meta’s own dismal findings about teen girls’ mental health on Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wondered whether Meta should change how it studies its platforms’ potential harms.

“Recent events have made me consider whether we should change our approach to research and analytics around social issues,” Zuckerberg wrote in a September 15th, 2021, email to top executives including then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and head of global affairs Nick Clegg. The day before, the Journal published a story based on documents obtained from a whistleblower later revealed to be Frances Haugen, which showed the company’s own research had found that “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” The subject line of Zuckerberg’s email read: “Social issue research and analytics — privileged and confidential.”

The 2021 email was unsealed Thursday after being collected in discovery by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez as part of a case alleging Meta deceptively positioned its products as safe for teens when it was aware of harmful design choices that the state claims addicted kids and allowed for child predators to thrive. In the complaint, the AG’s office alleged that disclosing harms Meta identified on its platforms “would have corrected the misleading and deceptive nature of its public statements proclaiming its platforms ‘safe.’” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told The Verge in a statement that the company “is proud of our continued commitment to doing transparent, industry-leading research. As we have for years, we continue to use these insights to make meaningful improvements, like introducing teen accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with tools to manage their teens’ experiences.”

The email is just one example of the kind of internal conversations expected to come to light throughout that trial, and in a series of cases with similar claims in California. Opening statements in the New Mexico case are expected to kick off next week.

In the email, Zuckerberg wrote that it seemed Meta’s peers managed to skirt public criticism on social issues by doing far less proactive research on the harms on their platforms. “Apple, for example, doesn’t seem to study any of this stuff,” he wrote. “As far as I understand, they don’t have anyone reviewing or moderating content and don’t even have a report flow in iMessage. They’ve taken the approach that it is people’s own responsibility what they do on the platform, and by Apple not taking that responsibility upon themselves, they haven’t created a staff or plethora of studies examining the tradeoffs in their approach. This has worked surprisingly well for them.”

While Apple seemed to evade critique, in Zuckerberg’s view, Meta instead “faced more criticism” because it reports more child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which “makes it seem like there’s more of that behavior on our platforms.” On the other hand, he noted, “when Apple did try to do something about CSAM, they were roundly criticized for it, which may encourage them to double down on their original approach.” Zuckerberg might have been referring to Apple’s announcement earlier that year of new features meant to protect kids, including scanning users’ iCloud photos for CSAM. But privacy advocates worried the move would create a giant backdoor for surveillance of user accounts. Apple later walked back the proposals. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the email.

Apple and Meta have long sparred in public and private over their different approaches to policy issues like privacy and age verification. But Zuckerberg also had similar observations of Meta’s other peers. “YouTube, Twitter and Snap take a similar approach, to lesser degrees,” he wrote. “YouTube seems to intentionally bury its head in the sand to stay below the radar and not be the center of attention. Twitter and Snap may just not have the resources to do this kind of research.” Many of the platforms have publicly shared research and initiatives over the years studying the safety of their platforms, including YouTube’s Youth and Families Advisory Committee made up of independent experts to guide teen well-being on the platform, as well as Snap’s Digital Well-Being Index (started in 2022).

Zuckerberg seemed to believe the public response to its internal research was unfair. “I think we should be commended for the work we do to study, understand, and improve social issues on our platforms,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the media is more likely to use any research or recommendations produced to say we’re not doing everything we can (implying for craven purposes) rather than that we’re taking these issues more seriously than anyone else in our industry by studying them and looking for solutions, not all of which are reasonable to implement because everything has tradeoffs.”

In response to the email, at least a couple top executives endorsed continuing some level of research into social issues, even in spite of the public perception risks. “Leaks suck, and will continue to happen, unless we find a way to eradicate them,” then-VP of central products Javier Olivan wrote. “Given that — is it still worth trying to understand these issues? I think it is the responsible thing to do / I would love for us to continue trying to understand how we can make our products better for everyone, but maybe we should limit the surface to those areas where we at least see some clear degree of correlation between usage of our products / the specific issue.” Then-VP of product, choice, and competition David Ginsberg said that “after a lot of wrestling with this myself the past few days,” he largely agreed with Olivan. “I think the internal work is important for providing a good product and a good user experience — separate and aside from any societal issues goals.”

A few days later, Guy Rosen, a product executive leading integrity work, shared several potential options of how to change the company’s organization around internal and external research, including pros and cons for each. Rosen wrote that this was only a “preliminary/discretional exercise” to understand the “spectrum of options.” Those ranged from centralizing teams that research highly sensitive topics in an effort to better control access to the materials, to the most extreme option of disbanding teams that research sensitive topics and outsourcing that work when needed. Ultimately, executives recommended the less extreme option of centralizing research teams, planning to announce it shortly after Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s upcoming congressional testimony. Mosseri, newly added to the email thread, chimed in that “Announcing this after my testify [sic] is worse than before, and we talked [about] this. It will leak, and it will make it look like I was hiding something.” Meta ended up announcing the changes before Mosseri’s testimony, and has said it continues to study sensitive topics like teens’ well-being.

In the initial email, Zuckerberg lamented that leaks of internal documents make it harder to do that work. “This may be part of why the rest of the industry has chosen a different approach towards these issues.”

Correction, February 5th: An earlier version misspelled Frances Haugen.