A lawsuit accusing Meta-owned platform Instagram of posing risks to children’s well-being can proceed in court, a district court ruled on Monday.
The class action lawsuit, filed in November 2021 by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, accused Meta of having “knowingly exploited its most vulnerable users—including children throughout the world—in order to drive corporate profits.” It claimed Meta misrepresented to investors that its product “does not harm children, that the Company takes aggressive and effective measures to stop the spread of harmful content, and that Facebook applies its standards of behavior equally to all users.”
The lawsuit pointed to a 2021 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report citing internal Facebook documents that claim Instagram was harmful to a sizable number of teenage girl users. The report noted a 2019 Facebook presentation that said, “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”…