Kid safety trial hears Instagram chief’s frustration over safety feature, ex-Meta employee who quit over ‘values’

Adam Mosseri, the Meta executive at the helm of Instagram, defended the platform’s safety record in testimony Tuesday and took issue with a plaintiff attorney’s emphasis on low usage numbers for a feature designed to encourage young users to take breaks.

Mosseri was appearing at a trial that pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which accuse the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms.

Jason Slothouber, a senior prosecutor for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, pressed Mosseri on the low adoption rate among teens for the “take a break” feature, which prompts users to step away if they’ve been scrolling a while.

Very few teens used the feature when Instagram first introduced it, but since launching separate teen accounts in 2024, Meta has made it the default setting for teenage users.

Mosseri appeared frustrated that Slothouber was focusing on a single Instagram safety feature when the Meta executive said, “There are many features we launch over many aspects of safety and well-being” that the company tries to improve over time.

The trial began last week in federal court in Oakland, California, and is expected to last about six weeks.

The four states were among 29 that sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy — the other 25 will go to trial later.

The company also faces lawsuits in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram since 2018 , testified for about an hour and is due back on the stand Wednesday.

He also testified earlier this year in the Los Angeles state court trial that pitted Meta and YouTube against a 20-year-old plaintiff identified only by the initials “KGM,” who said she became addicted to social media as a child.

Meta and Google were found liable for harms caused by their platforms, and KGM was awarded a total of $6 million.

In earlier testimony at the Oakland trial, Francesco Fogu, Instagram’s director of product design, had contentious exchanges with the plaintiffs’ lawyer over internal chats and documents shown to the jury.

In one instance, jurors were shown a passage from a document saying, “As a company, we make different choices when it comes to regulatory response.

Sometimes we don’t comply and accept a fine.