Mark Zuckerberg Tries to Play It Safe in Social Media Addiction Trial Testimony

Zuckerberg repeatedly hit back at accusing Lanier of “misrepresenting” his earlier statements. When it came to emails, Zuckerberg typically objected based on how old the message was, or his lack of familiarity with the Meta employees involved. “I don't think so, no,” he replied when he was directed to clarify if he knew Karina Newton, Instagram's head of public policy in 2021. And Zuckerberg has never failed to indicate when he was not actually entered on an email thread as evidence.

Perhaps anticipating these loose and repetitive talking points from Zuckerberg – who increasingly claimed that any increased engagement of a user on Facebook or Instagram simply reflected the “value” of those apps – Lanier suggested early on that the CEO was being coached to address these issues. “You have extensive media training,” he said. “I think I'm kind of known to be pretty bad at this,” Zuckerberg protested, drawing a rare laugh from the courtroom. Lanier went on to present Meta documents outlining communication strategies for Zuckerberg, describing his team as “telling you what kind of answers to give,” including in a context like testifying under oath. “I'm not sure what you're trying to imply,” Zuckerberg said. In the afternoon, Meta attorney Paul Schmidt returned to that line of questioning, asking whether Zuckerberg needed to speak to the media because of his role as the head of a large company. “More than I want,” Zuckerberg said, to more laughter.

In an even more, well, “meta” moment after the court returned from lunch, Kuhl struck a stern tone by warning everyone in the room that anyone wearing “recording glasses” — like the AI-equipped Oakley and Ray-Ban glasses sold by Meta for up to $499 — had to remove them while attending the audio recordings, where both video and audio recordings are prohibited.

KGM's suit and the others that follow are new in their sidestepping of Section 230, a law that has protected technology companies from liability for content created by users on their platforms. As such, Zuckerberg stuck to a play that frames the lawsuit as a fundamental misunderstanding of how Meta works. When Lanier presented evidence that Meta teams were working to increase the minutes users spent on their platforms each day, Zuckerberg countered that the company long ago moved away from those goals, or that those numbers weren't even “goals” per se, just metrics of competitiveness within the industry. When Lanier wondered if Meta was simply hiding behind an age-restriction policy that was “unenforceable” and perhaps “unenforceable,” according to an email from Nick Clegg, Meta's former president of global affairs, Zuckerberg calmly deflected with a story about people bypassing their security despite continuous improvements on that front.

However, Lanier could always return to KGM, who he said had signed up on Instagram at the age of 9, about five years before the app began asking users for their birthdays in 2019. While Zuckerberg could more or less break down internal data about, for example, the need to convert tweens into loyal teenage users, or Meta's apparent rejection of the alarming Instagram mission analysis of the expert analysis, “he had the risk of the risks from Instagram's experts didn't have a prepackaged response to Lanier's grand finale: a billboard-sized tarp, which took up half the width of the courtroom and required holding up hundreds of posts from KGM's Instagram account. As Zuckerberg blinked hard at the large display, visible only to himself, Kuhl, and the jury, Lanier said it was a measure of the amount of time KGM had spent on the app. plugged in. “In a sense, you have all these pictures,” he added. “I'm not sure that's right,” Zuckerberg replied.

When Lanier finished and Schmidt got the chance to pitch Zuckerberg to an alternative vision of Meta as a utopia of connectivity and free expression, the founder quickly regained his stride. “I wanted people to have a good experience with that,” he said of the company's platforms. Then, a moment later: “People naturally change their time according to what they find valuable.”