{"id":13045,"date":"2026-03-05T20:03:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T03:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-jurors-watch-zuckerberg-deposition-in-meta-child-safety-bellwether-trial\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:35:09","slug":"new-mexico-jurors-watch-zuckerberg-deposition-in-meta-child-safety-bellwether-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-jurors-watch-zuckerberg-deposition-in-meta-child-safety-bellwether-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico jurors watch Zuckerberg deposition in Meta child safety bellwether trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A recording of Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's deposition is played for jurors Wednesday in Santa Fe. Jim Weber\/Santa Fe New Mexican via AP<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Mexico\u2019s attorney general alleges that Meta violated state consumer protection laws in failing to disclose what it knew about the dangers of addiction to social media as well as child sexual exploitation on the company\u2019s platforms. Attorneys for Meta say the company discloses risks and makes efforts to weed out harmful content and experiences \u2013 acknowledging that some bad material still gets through its safety net.<\/p>\n

In the pretrial deposition recorded last year, prosecutors confronted Zuckerberg with internal company communications and emails from platform users spanning back to the infancy of Facebook in 2008 that discuss \u201cproblematic\u201d and addictive use of social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past 15 years, users of your products have repeatedly told your company and you personally that they find the products to be addictive, that\u2019s true isn\u2019t it?\u201d Previn Warren, a member of the prosecution team, asked Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg took issue with the word \u201caddictive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people sometimes use that word colloquially,\u201d he said \u201cThat\u2019s not what we\u2019re trying to do with the products, and it\u2019s not how I think they work.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Zuckerberg said he wants to \u201cmake sure that we can understand so we can improve the products and make them better for people in ways that they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg went on to concede that he initially set goals for employees to increase the amount of time teenagers spent on its platform amid efforts to expand business revenue and the number of platform users.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I think we focused on time spent as one of the major engagement goals,\u201d Zuckerberg said. \u201cSometime during 2017 and beyond \u2013 for, at this point, most of the last 10 years \u2013 we\u2019ve focused on other metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deposition also delved into Zuckerberg\u2019s decision to lift a temporary Instagram ban on the use of cosmetic filters that changed people\u2019s appearance in a way that seemed to promote plastic surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI care a lot about not cracking down on the ways that people can express themselves and there\u2019s, like, always been a lot of pressure to do that and censor our services,\u201d Zuckerberg said. \u201cI didn\u2019t find any of the anecdotal examples that people used to be convincing that it was actually clear evidence that this was going to be harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deposition was shown during the fourth week of the civil trial. Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, prohibits children under 13 from using its platforms, but some manage to sign up anyway.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the New Mexico jury watched a video in which prosecutors peppered Instagram head Adam Mosseri with questions about Meta\u2019s approach to safety, corporate profits and social media features. They also asked him about policies for young users that might contribute to unwanted communications with adults.<\/p>\n

The New Mexico case and a separate trial against Meta in Los Angeles could set the course for thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg testified last month in Los Angeles about young people\u2019s use of Instagram and has answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta\u2019s platforms.<\/p>\n

During his 2024 congressional testimony, he apologized to families whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were caused by social media. But while he told parents he was \u201csorry for everything you have all been through,\u201d he stopped short of taking direct responsibility for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recording of Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s deposition is played for jurors Wednesday in Santa Fe. Jim Weber\/Santa Fe New Mexican via APcca New Mexico\u2019s attorney general alleges that Meta violated state consumer protection laws in failing to disclose what it knew about the dangers of addiction to social media as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,138,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18785,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13045\/revisions\/18785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13045"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}