> New court documents make clearer than ever that Meta has been working hard to control the scientific narrative on their products
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> The resulting documents reveal:
> Explicit plans by Meta to discredit psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has been raising alarms about social media and youth mental health.
> Frustration by internal researchers because Meta lawyers were stopping them from researching youth mental health and their platforms. (Why would lawyers stop these studies? Because they risk finding something. The researchers respond by asking "“if the study only included questions about social support/positive outcomes would legal approve?”)
> Explicit plans to work with the National Academies of Sciences on social media and youth mental health with goals to “get credit” for proposing the assessment and “greatly shape the nature of the questions they will explore.”
> Alternative plans to work with another group if they cannot adequately influence NAS research, and “ensure product feature evaluations are excluded” (i.e., their product features that might be causing harm)
> Discussions of which study questions are most likely to yield benefits for the company
Nothing new really, this is how US big business operate. Tech is no different from fossil fuel, chemical or medical insurance lobbies. Anyone still remembers Ethyl corporation shenanigans and the Clair Patterson odyssey? We haven't moved on, they still do the same, just the suits change style and there are few gadgets around...
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> The resulting documents reveal: