Meta discussed ‘whisper strategy’ against social media critic Jonathan Haidt, files show
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Meta staff discussed deploying a “whisper strategy” to undermine the influential US academic whose work has inspired a global social media crackdown, according to court documents.
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Employees at the parent group of Facebook and Instagram sought to discredit Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, a book that helped tip the debate about online safety towards more stringent measures such as the under-16 ban in Australia.
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Minutes of internal meetings contained in a recent legal filing in the US showed that staff discussed how to “get the academic community to disavow Haidt”.
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They appear in a document titled “Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes”, which refers to discussions of how Meta could “turn other academics against Haidt” and to a “whisper strategy” aimed at achieving that goal. It also mentions “debunking” his work.
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Minutes from a meeting on 8 March 2023 mention “Curtiss”, an apparent reference to Meta’s then vice-president of research, Curtiss Cobb. It states: “Curtiss’s goal for this work: how do we get the academic community to disavow Haidt. Can’t co-opt them, so how do we enrage them … so the media finds him not credible.” It then adds: “Not thinking about this as a loud strategy.
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A below-the-line campaign.” It suggests getting someone called “Gellman” to write “a takedown piece”. The “Gellman” figure is not identified in the document but Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University who has been critical of Haidt’s work, wrote in a blogpost this week that he was “never hired by Facebook to do a hit job on Jonathan Haidt”.
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Gelman said he had received money from Mark Zuckerberg’s company in the past on a “no-strings” basis but had never been asked by Meta to look at social media’s impact on teenagers’ health. Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation argued that widespread use of smartphones has caused a mental health crisis for young people.
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The academic has become a persuasive advocate for strict regulation of digital media and devices, including bans on social media for under-16s and on smartphones in schools.
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Early this year the then health secretary, Wes Streeting, asked Haidt to address officials on a possible social media ban for under-16s in the UK.
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The minutes were produced before Haidt published his book in 2024 and discuss responding to a Substack post written by the academic in which he reviews “a bunch of articles”. It is not clear whether Meta acted on the ideas outlined in the minutes.
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In statement to the tech news website The Verge, Haidt said he was “not surprised” by the discussions, which were revealed in a court filing as part of a litigation brought by school districts suing the company. “When companies can’t dispute the evidence, they go after the messenger,” he said.
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