Adam Mosseri isn’t doing Facebook any favors.
The head of Instagram was interviewed on the
“We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents, but by and large cars create way more value in the world than they destroy,” argued Mosseri. “And I think social media is similar.”
The
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” read one 2019 internal slide obtained by the paper. “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” read another.
Credit: Arturo Holmes / getty
In response to Mosseri’s car comments, Kafka rightly pointed out that automobiles are subject to intense safety regulation on a federal level, which Mosseri countered by pivoting between saying social media regulation is welcome and, well, that it’s also
“We think you have to be careful,” he said, “because regulation can cause more problems.”
Kafka was not the only one to see and highlight the inconsistency in Mosseri’s defense. Many on Twitter were quick to point out that Mosseri had come up empty when grasping at straws.
Mosseri’s analogy involving fatal car crashes may have been a little too on the nose. The Facebook research reported by the Journal found that, as the paper put it, “Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed.”
While Mosseri’s framing of social media as an ultimate societal benefit that just so happens to have some
In 2018,
The memo argued that Facebook’s purpose was to connect people, and sure people might die as a result, and that would be bad, but that wouldn’t slow the company down.
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“Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies,” wrote Bosworth. “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.”
It sounds like Mosseri and Bosworth have a lot to talk about. Too bad for the rest of us that the men’s collected influence on the lives of billions means we’ll all be forced to listen.