Zuckerberg's Day in Court

“We call Mark Zuckerberg to the stand.” Thus began Wednesday’s nearly six hours of testimony from the Meta Platforms CEO in a trial of a lawsuit brought by a young woman against several tech companies including Meta, contending that social media causes depression and suicidal thoughts. I was in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom, where Zuckerberg, sitting in the witness stand with an exit sign over his right shoulder, came across as more annoyed than threatened during intense cross-examination.

Mark Lanier, the plaintiffs’ attorney in the landmark case, who spoke with a faint Texas twang, showed the courtroom dozens of internal emails and chats from Meta employees and executives over the years debating decisions like whether to ban the beauty filters teens used on Instagram to mimic the results of plastic surgery. That’s the kind of Instagram feature central to the case, in which families with children who have had mental health problems say social media apps like Instagram are designed to cause harm. The attorney presented an email one Meta executive had sent Zuckerberg, urging him to ban the feature because it could cause body dysmorphia.