Ohio's attorney general sued Meta for allegedly misleading investors about Instagram's harmful effects on teenage girls, seeking over $100 billion in damages after internal research revealed the platform worsened body issues for one in three teen girls.
Between April 29 and October 21, 2021, Meta (formerly Facebook) and its executives allegedly violated federal securities law by intentionally misleading the public about the negative impact of its products on minors. The lawsuit was filed by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on behalf of Meta investors and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. Internal research conducted by Facebook showed that Instagram was harmful to some teenage girls, with the photo-sharing app worsening body issues for one in three teenage girls. These revelations emerged through The Wall Street Journal's 'Facebook Files' series beginning September 13, 2021, and testimony from whistleblower Frances Haugen. The disclosures caused Facebook stock to fall by $54.08 per share, resulting in over $100 billion in losses for investors including the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. During earnings calls, CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly downplayed concerns about how Facebook's algorithm might amplify controversial content, claiming the company's practices were 'quite robust' and that they 'go out of our way to try to reduce' extremist content. The company had also planned to build an Instagram app for kids under 13, but suspended the project in September 2021 amid growing bipartisan political pressure following the harmful effects revelations.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI that exposes users to harmful, abusive, unsafe or inappropriate content. May involve providing advice or encouraging action. Examples of toxic content include hate speech, violence, extremism, illegal acts, or child sexual abuse material, as well as content that violates community norms such as profanity, inflammatory political speech, or pornography.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed