Jeff Horwitz

A coalition of 41 states and Washington (DC) are filing lawsuits alleging that Meta Platforms has intentionally built its products with addictive features that harm young users of its Facebook and Instagram services. The lawsuits, in federal and state courts, say Meta misled the public about the dangers of its platforms for young people. The states also allege that Meta knowingly has marketed its products to users under the age of 13, who are barred from the platform by both Meta’s policies and federal law.

Last year when Facebook blocked news in Australia in response to potential legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities. It publicly called the resulting chaos “inadvertent.” Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke.

A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general announced it is investigating how Instagram attracts and affects young people, amping up the pressure on parent company Meta Platforms over potential harms to its users.

Many Republicans say Facebook discriminates against conservatives. But internal communications at the company show that employees and their bosses have hotly debated whether and how to restrain right-wing publishers, with more-senior employees often providing a check on agitation from the rank and file. The documents, which don’t capture all of the employee messaging, didn’t mention equivalent debates over left-wing publications.

Facebook is struggling to detect and deal with users’ creating multiple accounts on its flagship platform, according to internal documents that raise new questions about how the social-media giant measures its audience. An internal Facebook presentation in spring 2021 called the phenomenon of single users with multiple accounts “very prevalent” among new accounts. The finding came after an examination of roughly 5,000 recent sign-ups on the service indicated that at least 32 percent and as many as 56 percent were opened by existing users.

Facebook has come under increasing fire for its effect on young users and its efforts to create products for them. Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that Facebook could lose a new generation of users critical to its future. The company formed a team to study preteens, set a three-year goal to create more products for them and commissioned strategy papers about the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users.

Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said Facebook allows its more than three billion users to speak on equal footing and that its standards of behavior apply to everyone, no matter their status or fame. In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules. The program, known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists.

Facebook was justified in banning then-President Donald Trump, the company’s independent oversight board ruled but didn’t appropriately explain if or why the former president should be permanently locked out of the social-media platform. “It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored,” the board said in its decision.

Facebook will prohibit new political advertisements in the week before the US presidential election in Nov and seek to flag premature claims of victory by candidates, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said.

Facebook says privacy changes that Apple has made to its newest operating system will cripple Facebook’s ability to serve targeted ads to iPhone users while they use outside apps. The announcement, which Facebook made in a note to app developers, will affect its Audience Network business, which connects users’ Facebook identities with their off-platform activities. That enables the company to serve them ads on apps outside of Facebook’s. The changes go into effect with Apple’s new operating system for iPhone, called iOS14, which was released in beta form to developers recently.