Mark Zuckerberg deposition shown to New Mexico jurors as trial enters fourth week

Wednesday at 11: 30 a. m. ET, jurors in New Mexico watched a recorded deposition of mark zuckerberg in a bellwether civil trial testing claims that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram harmed children. The testimony is landing now because the case has moved into deposition playback in its fourth week, putting executives’ past statements and internal discussions directly in front of jurors.

The New Mexico attorney general alleges Meta violated state consumer protection laws by failing to disclose what it knew about the dangers of social media addiction and child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Meta disputes the allegations and says it discloses risks, invests heavily in safety efforts, and still faces the reality that some harmful content and behavior can slip through.

Mark Zuckerberg rejects “addictive” label while acknowledging past engagement goals

In the deposition recorded last year, prosecutors confronted mark zuckerberg with internal company communications and user emails dating back to 2008 discussing “problematic” and addictive use of social media. When asked whether users had repeatedly told the company they found the products addictive, Zuckerberg pushed back on the term, saying people sometimes use it colloquially and that addictiveness was not what the company was trying to create.

Still, Zuckerberg said he wants to understand user experiences so Meta can improve its products. He also conceded he initially set goals for employees to increase the amount of time teenagers spent on Meta’s platforms as the company sought to expand business revenue and user growth.

Zuckerberg said “time spent” was a major engagement goal, but that sometime during 2017 and beyond the company shifted focus to other metrics.

Raul Torrez case centers on child safety, exploitation claims, and product features

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has accused Meta of putting profits and user engagement over child safety and of knowingly enabling predators to use Facebook and Instagram to exploit children. Meta has denied those claims, pointing to steps it says it has taken to combat exploitation and improve safety.

In taped depositions played at the New Mexico trial on Tuesday and Wednesday, Zuckerberg and Instagram leader Adam Mosseri said harms to children such as sexual exploitation and detriments to mental health are inevitable at the scale of Meta’s services. Zuckerberg told jurors that when serving billions of people, a small percentage will be criminals, and that the company should work as hard as possible to stop that activity, while not assuming the system will ever be perfect.

Jurors also heard evidence that Meta estimated in 2020 that 500, 000 children were receiving sexually inappropriate communications on Instagram each day, including grooming. Meta responded that the technology used at the time was overly wide and cautious, meaning interactions that were not inappropriate were included in the count.

The court also heard that Meta identified its “People you may know” algorithm as a main driver of these interactions, with the tool used to discover victims in 79% of identified cases in 2018. In addition, jurors heard that about 30% of adults whose accounts were disabled for targeting children had returned to the platform and resumed that behavior.

In another line of testimony summarized in depositions, jurors heard that Zuckerberg authorized end-to-end encryption for Facebook Messenger in 2023 despite warnings from child safety groups Thorn and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that the move could pose risks to children. In the taped deposition, Zuckerberg said the privacy encryption provides users was a more pressing issue.

End-to-end encryption is a privacy feature that prevents anyone other than the sender and intended recipient from viewing messages by converting text and images into unreadable ciphers that are decoded when received; the content is not stored on Meta’s servers.

Meta trial timeline and other proceedings add pressure in February courtroom schedule

The timing of this week’s deposition playback reflects where the New Mexico case stands: the trial began in early February and is expected to last about seven weeks. On Tuesday, the jury watched a recorded deposition of Mosseri in which prosecutors questioned Meta’s approach to safety, corporate profits, and social media features, including policies for young users that could contribute to unwanted communications with adults.

The New Mexico case and a separate trial against Meta in Los Angeles have been described in court proceedings as potential tests that could set the course for thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies. Zuckerberg testified last month in Los Angeles about young people’s use of Instagram and has also answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms.

For its part, Meta says it has strict, longstanding rules against child exploitation and has invested billions to fight it through proactive detection technology and safety features designed to prevent harm. The company also points to changes it says it introduced, including teen accounts with default protections that debuted in 2024.

The next scheduled milestone in the New Mexico trial is further deposition video and witness testimony during the ongoing fourth week, with court continuing Thursday morning at 9: 00 a. m. ET. If the case stays on the current track, the trial is expected to continue for several more weeks before jurors receive the case for deliberations.