Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: Meta lawyers tried to block internal research showing teen harm, judge
rules

Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2025 12:00:15 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-la...

A federal court ruled that Facebook parent Meta can't use attorney-client
privilege to block internal documents and research related to teen harm,
Bloomberg Law reported. The decision is a setback to Meta in its lawsuits
against multiple states that accused the company of making its platforms
addictive despite knowing they were harmful to teenagers.

Judge Yvonne Williams of the Washington, DC Superior Court found that Meta's
lawyers advised employees to "remove," "block," "button up" or "limit"
portions of internal studies on the harm of social media to teens' mental
health, in order to limit the company's legal liability. The court said that
this advice appeared to be an attempt to cover up or alter information,
meaning it falls under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client
privilege. Meta now has seven days to turn over four documents created
between November 2022 and July 2023.

Meta disagreed with the ruling, a spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement.
"These were routine, appropriate lawyer-client discussions and contrary to
the DistrictΓÇÖs misleading claim, no research findings were deleted or
destroyed."

The ruling is related to lawsuits filed in a California court involving
dozens of US state attorneys general. Also involved are hundreds of private
civil lawsuits filed by parents, teens and school boards against Meta and
other platforms around social media addiction and harms. The first trials are
scheduled to start in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-la...
research-showing-teen-harm-judge-rules-120015673.html?src=rss

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