Zuckerberg defends Meta in landmark trial: 'We’re in the right place now'

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that he regretted the slow progress his company made in identifying underage users on Instagram while testifying in a landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles.

Asked to comment on internal company complaints that not enough was being done to check whether children under 13 were using the platform, the 41-year-old boss of Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, said improvements had been made.

But "I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner," he added.

Zuckerberg was the most anticipated witness in the California trial, the first in a series of cases that could set a legal precedent for thousands of lawsuits filed by U.S. families against social networking platforms.

The trial marked the first time the billionaire addressed the security of his globally dominant platforms directly before a jury.

Zuckerberg was very reserved at first, reported an AFP reporter in the courtroom, but then began to become animated, showing signs of anger, shaking his head and waving his hands as he turned to the jury.

The 12 jurors in Los Angeles listened to increasingly tense testimony as the plaintiff's lawyer, Mark Lanier, pressed Zuckerberg on age verification and his guiding philosophy for making decisions at the large social-networking company he controls.

The trial will last until the end of March, when the jury will decide whether Google-owned YouTube and Meta's Instagram are responsible for the mental health problems suffered by Kaley GM, a 20-year-old California resident who has been a heavy user of social networks since childhood.

Kaley GM began using YouTube at age six, Instagram at nine, then TikTok and Snapchat.

Children under 13 are not allowed on Instagram, and Lanier pressed Zuckerberg on the fact that Kaylee had easily signed up for the platform despite rules buried deep in the user agreement, which he said a child could not be expected to read.

"Right place now"

Zuckerberg was confronted with an internal document that said Instagram had four million users under the age of 13 in 2015, at the time the plaintiff adopted the app, and that 30 percent of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the United States were users.

Zuckerberg said that "we're in the right place now" regarding age verification, and that new tools and methods will be added over time.

Lanier went on to argue that when enforcement of these rules was more lax, young people like Kaley were also subject to Meta's efforts to increase time spent on its world-dominating apps.

Zuckerberg admitted that "we did used to have goals around time," but that the company's goal was always to "build useful services that help people connect to the people they care about and learn about the world."

The trial will determine whether Google and Meta deliberately designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use among young people, damaging their mental health in the process.

The case, along with two similar trials scheduled in Los Angeles this summer, aims to set a standard for settling thousands of lawsuits blaming social networks for fueling an epidemic of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and suicide among young people.

The proceedings focus solely on app design, algorithms and personalization features as U.S. law gives the platforms near-total immunity from liability for user-generated content.