[charles_f]

One thing that I would recommend is to avoid weaving the actual lies with statements that are subject to judgement. For example, the first two rows are about the level of investment in protection tools, and are claimed as lies because of the ineffectiveness of these tools. Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results.

When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then carried on reading and found real, unchallengeable lies, nevertheless had a little alarm in my head that these might be interpretations more than facts.

It would probably be good to either remove those borderline "understatements" or "distortion of the truth" ; or present them as things we can't trust given all the other lies.

[pinkmuffinere]

Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo

- Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited _on social media_ were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram” (emphasis mine). Thanks kstrauser for investigating

- Mark said “Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.” But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Meta halted the study and did not publicly disclose the results – citing harmful media coverage as the reason for canning the study. I suppose he might debate whether this is a “causal” link, but it’s fairly damning.

- Instagram head Adam Mosseri told reporters that research he had seen suggests the app’s effects on teen well-being is likely “quite small.” An internal 2019 study titled “Teen Mental Health: Creatures of Habit” found (1) “Teens can’t switch off Instagram even if they want to.” (2) “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.” (3) “The pressure ‘to be present and perfect’ is a defining characteristic of the anxiety teens face around Instagram. This restricts both their ability to be emotionally honest and also to create space for themselves to switch off.”

[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...

[kwanbix]

I reported many times sexual profiles, and they allways came rejected.

[mgaunard]

I don't understand how those statements are contradictory.

[Natsu]

Causal has a specific meaning related to causal modeling, most studies can't show causality, a lot only show correlation[1].

And the third one seems to be about effect sizes. But a lot of this is still concerning, even if they appear to be trying to say technically true but misleading things.

[1] Yes, newer methods can show causation, not just correlation. See The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl for an introduction to how that works.

[tracker1]

There have definitely been a lot of sexually explicit ads on the platform. If you're a straight, middle-aged male, I'm pretty sure many have seen them.

[dantillberg]

"sexually explicit content" and "child sex trafficking" are rather different things. Connected? Maybe? If you want to claim that Mark was lying, you've got to demonstrate the connection as part of the claim. Otherwise, it's a non sequitur.

[close04]

The amount and severity of such concerning topics still lets you agree that these are just "statements that are subject to judgement" and "interpretations more than facts"?

I encourage critical thinking and fairness but if a coin lands on one side 100 times in a row I don't need to flip it forever to see if eventually it reaches 50/50. That many lies about extremely serious issues removes any benefit of the doubt for the liar.

[FlamingMoe]

He needs to be in prison.

[noslenwerdna]

"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness."

This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.

[squeegmeister]

At the least they should lead with the most indisputable lies and leave the borderlines towards the end

[PantaloonFlames]

You can invest a lot and get minimal results, OR, it’s possible they invested in 71-odd tools and only 17% produced results, but those results were as desired or expected so they didn’t actually need the other 83% of the tools they tried.

The number of tools that were deemed effective is not proportional to the “the effect”.

[lingrush4]

After reading the examples, I trust Zuckerberg more than the author of this article. And that's a really low bar. The evidence for Zuckerberg lying here is flimsy at best. It's almost like the author doesn't know what lying even is.

[infinitewars]

I would say it's a very high bar-- convincing you to trust him is literally Zuck's entire business from day one.

[danielmarkbruce]

"If you mix raisins and turds, all you have is turds"

It's a common phenomenon - mixing strong arguments with weak ones because then you have "more arguments". So dumb.

[pbhjpbhj]

And yet you mixed strong advice with childish dismissal.

But I agree, you should present your best argument, otherwise they'll attack your weakest argument and claim victory. Such tactics are weak in logic but often successful.

[TheRealPomax]

Same, I read the first few and it just read as conspiracy theory material, where the "evidence" that refuses the claim has nothing to do with the claim unless you're already halfway down the koolaid pitcher.

Always better to leave the "maybe, if you squint, but just as easily no" stuff out if you're trying convince others that there's a serious, objective problem with receipts.

[close04]

> Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results.

Evidence show that Meta can be very effective at achieving the results that drive profits. It's already suspicious when they fail exactly at the ones that would lower profits. Even more when you consider the rest of the evidence which shows intention to hide the "failure". That breaks trust and you're just choosing to believe that the lie that they got caught with must have been the only one.

Short of universal laws almost anything can go both ways. But when one is overwhelmingly more likely you can make a concession and agree Zuck was lying a lot in there.

You're bending over backwards to muddy the waters with vague "it could go both ways" statements.

[charles_f]

Likely a lie but also they do have tools, they're just inefficient. When you have 10 other examples that are undeniable, might as well remove the ones that can be challenged, let alone open with it, or you open yourself to very standard rebuttal PR strategies that focus on these.

[BurningFrog]

There are a lot of vocal angry people and bots around who hate everything billionaires say, do, or wear.

Tuning out that noise while still noticing genuine bad things billionaires do is really hard.

[flawn]

There are enough verifiable actions by Zuckerberg that proxy for some sort of behaviour unaligned with the wellbeing of society/humanity. You don't need to cut out the noise here, if there's even any on e.g. HN

[Forgeties79]

And a lot of people with valid grievances.