An internal email recently unsealed in a New Mexico lawsuit shows that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seriously considered whether to change the way the company conducts research and data analysis on social issues after the company's research on Instagram's harm to the mental health of young girls was revealed, causing a huge public outcry.
On September 15, 2021, the day after the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report that "Instagram makes 30% of women feel worse about their bodies", Zuckerberg sent an email to then chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and head of global affairs Nick Clegg and other senior executives. The subject of the email was "Research and Analysis of Social Issues - Privilege and Confidentiality." "Recent events have made me think about whether we should change the way we conduct research and analysis on social issues," he wrote in the letter.
This email was submitted to the court by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres as evidence to support the state's accusation against Meta: Meta was suspected of deceiving the public by promoting it as a "safe" image even though it knew that its products were addictive in design, promoted the activities of child sexual predators, and caused harm to teenagers. The indictment believes that if Meta had disclosed the platform harms it had internally identified at that time, it would have been sufficient to correct its misleading statements externally claiming that the platform was "safe."
In response to the lawsuit, Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the media that the company is "proud to continue to conduct transparent, industry-leading research" and said that this research "has been used to drive substantive improvements for many years, such as introducing built-in protections for teen accounts and providing management tools for parents."
It can be seen from the content of the newly unsealed email that Zuckerberg not only reflected on Meta's research strategy, but also compared it with the practices of his peers, especially naming companies such as Apple that seemed to have avoided similar public opinion crises through "low-key" strategies. He wrote that Apple "doesn't seem to study these things at all" and has neither a content moderation team nor a reporting mechanism in iMessage. Instead, it takes the position that "users themselves are responsible for their actions", eliminating the need to build a dedicated team to systematically evaluate the social trade-offs brought about by the platform. In his view, this approach of not actively researching or accumulating data is "unexpectedly effective."
Zuckerberg also mentioned that on the issue of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), Meta has received greater infamy in the public mind because of the greater number of reports - which makes people mistakenly believe that related behaviors are more rampant on its platform. In contrast, when Apple announced a new set of child protection features in 2021, including scanning iCloud photos, it was severely criticized by public opinion due to privacy concerns, and finally chose to withdraw the relevant plans. In Zuckerberg's view, this may prompt Apple to further adhere to the original path of "not taking responsibility proactively".
In addition to Apple, he also pointed the finger at platforms such as YouTube, Twitter (now X) and Snap, saying that these companies "adopt similar strategies to varying degrees." In his description, YouTube seems to be intentionally "burying its head in the sand" to avoid becoming the center of public discussion; while Twitter and Snap may have difficulty conducting systematic research on complex social issues on the platform due to resource constraints. However, the report also pointed out that these platforms have successively announced research and initiatives related to youth safety and digital well-being in recent years, such as YouTube’s establishment of a Youth and Family Advisory Council, Snap’s launch of a digital well-being index, etc.
In the email, Zuckerberg seemed quite dissatisfied with the outside world's reaction to Meta's internal research. He believed that the company should have been "praised" for proactive research and trying to improve the social impact of the platform, but instead it became the target of public opinion attacks. He wrote that the media often uses any research or internal advice to accuse Meta of "not doing its best" instead of acknowledging that Meta has invested more energy in these issues in the industry, and that many solutions have trade-offs in reality and cannot be implemented one by one.
Despite this, judging from subsequent replies, Meta executives did not unanimously support the idea of "shrinkage research." Javier Ollivan, then Vice President of Central Product, admitted in his reply that “leaks are bad and will continue to happen,” but still emphasized that “trying to understand these issues is the responsible thing to do.” He hoped that the company would continue to study how to make products “better” for everyone, but could focus on topics that were clearly relevant. David Ginsberg, vice president of product, selection and competition, also said that after several days of "repeated struggle", he basically agrees with this view and believes that internal research is crucial to improving the product experience itself, even if the broader "social goals" are put aside.
A few days later, Guy Rosen, the product lead responsible for integrity, presented management with a list of options for how to adjust the company’s organizational structure for research on sensitive topics. These options range from "centralizing teams working on highly sensitive topics so that access can be more tightly controlled" to the extreme of "disbanding internal teams working on sensitive topics and outsourcing them if necessary," with their own pros and cons. In the end, management did not recommend the most radical approach, but preferred to centralize the relevant research teams, and planned to announce this adjustment after Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified before Congress.
Mosseri was later added to the email discussion, and he reminded that if he announced this adjustment after attending the hearing, "it would look like he was hiding something" and emphasized that the team had communicated this before. In the end, Meta chose to announce the reorganization of its research department before Mosseri's testimony and stated that the company would continue to conduct research on sensitive issues such as youth well-being. This also confirms what Zuckerberg lamented in the email: the leakage of internal documents has made such work more difficult, and may also partly explain why "other companies in the industry have chosen different paths on these issues."