Documents and emails released by Congress show Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg turned down a request from the company’s top leadership in August 2021 to expand its child safety and health workforce. It became clear.
Nick Clegg, then vice president of international affairs at Facebook (which changed its name to Meta later that year), reportedly told Zuckerberg in an email that he wanted to focus on preventing bullying, harassment and self-harm. The company urged the company to hire 45 more employees. bloomberg.
“From a policy perspective, this effort has gained increasing urgency in recent months,” Clegg wrote. “Politicians in the US, UK, EU and Australia have publicly and privately raised concerns about the impact of our products on the mental health of young people.”
Others include senior product executive Naomi Greit, chief product officer Chris Cox, and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who resigned from the tech giant’s board earlier this month after a 12-year term. Meta executives supported Mr. Clegg’s request to expand the company’s subsidiary operations. health and safety team, according to an email obtained by Bloomberg.
The message was posted in metadata released by the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of Wednesday’s hearing in which Zuckerberg and fellow CEOs of X, TikTok, Snap and Discord will testify about online child sexual exploitation and the impact of social media. It was in the company’s internal communications. About the children before the committee.
Clegg’s August 2021 request was denied, Bloomberg reported.
A subsequent email from Mr Clegg to Mr Zuckerberg in November 2021 called for a reduction in the number of new hires and acknowledged that the original proposal was “not funded”.
According to Bloomberg, Congress has not released any of Zuckerberg’s emails to Clegg.
During the time it took Mr. Clegg to revise his staffing proposal, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell investigation that included a series of internal documents. “Facebook File” —Leaked by whistleblower and former Facebook data engineer Francis Haugen.
The 248-page once-secret file, released in October 2021, reveals that Meta recognized the negative impact its network of social media sites had on young users, including teenage girls, of the hugely popular Instagram app. It showed that it was.
According to Bloomberg, Mr. Clegg appeared to reference the reports about the Facebook files in his message to Mr. Zuckerberg, noting that the topic of user safety has become more urgent for Meta to address.
“Understandably, this effort and narrative has become a more important focus for policymakers, regulators and others in recent weeks, and this is unlikely to diminish in the future,” he said.
“I support this and will follow up,” Sandberg wrote to Clegg, according to documents released by Congress. “As you know, we have problems with budgeting across the board, so I can’t promise you what’s going to happen.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Meta ended up hiring in response to Clegg’s request in November 2021, but Meta added more than 13,000 new employees in the same year, according to Bloomberg. The company reportedly added jobs.
A Meta spokesperson told the Post: “These selected documents provide a complete background on how the company operates and what decisions are made.” It’s not like there is,” he said.
“We have a strong central team that oversees our youth wellbeing initiatives across the company, and we have built the technology and teams to be able to quickly and efficiently implement new improvements across specific apps,” a spokesperson said. added that the company has “more than 30 tools.” , is loaded with resources and features, and has protections to keep teens safe and away from potentially harmful content and unwanted contact. ”
Meta currently has about 40,000 employees working in safety and security and has spent more than $20 billion on those efforts since 2016, according to testimony Zuckerberg prepared for Congress on Wednesday. spending.
But the company has faced multiple child safety lawsuits in recent months, including one filed earlier this month alleging Mehta “solicited” an Apple executive’s 12-year-old daughter on Instagram. This also includes lawsuits filed by law.
The allegations are part of a broader civil lawsuit filed in December by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, alleging that underage users of Facebook and Instagram could be exposed to sex offenders on the apps. claims that they are being bombarded with adult sex content.
