"The latest revelations about Meta's malfeasance come from newly unsealed court documents. In 2020, the company discovered through its own experimental research

"The latest revelations about Meta's malfeasance come from newly unsealed court documents. In 2020, the company discovered through its own experimental research - an initiative known as Project Mercury - that when users reduced the amount of time they spent on Facebook, their levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness decreased. Meta's lawyers buried the findings." Further reading: https://dn710108.ca.archive.org/0/items/gov.uscourts.cand.401490/gov.uscourts.cand.401490.2480.0.pdf https://dn710108.ca.archive.org/0/items/gov.uscourts.cand.40... Excerpts: "And we start with what is perhaps the most succinct acknowledgment of the problem, from a chat between two UX Researchers: "oh my gosh yall IG is a drug... We're basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can't feel reward anymore... like their reward tolerance is so high... I know Adam [Mosseri] doesn't want to hear it he freaked out when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but its undeniable! Its biological and psychological... the top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more. That would be fine if its productive but most of the time it isn't... the majority is just mindless scrolling and ads." Ex. 74 at 2152-53." "One Meta employee warned, "if the results are bad and we don't publish and they leak, is it going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves? I went... oh." Ex. 91 at 1943."