Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri took the hot seat Wednesday at a U.S. Senate hearing on Instagram’s impact on teens. Over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Mosseri provided answers that often frustrated lawmakers trying to hold the platform accountable for its effect on teens. (Adweek)
They pressed him to commit to share data with researchers on algorithmic ranking systems and to support legislation for stronger privacy and security protections for children online. Even Instagram’s announcements this week on new safety tools for children were too little and too late, they said. (NYT)
Mosseri, a longtime executive at Facebook who was named head of Instagram in 2018, held to the message that Instagram plays a positive role in the lives of teenagers and that Meta is going to great lengths to be transparent with the public. (NPR)
In the hearing, Mosseri followed Meta’s approach to recent damning reporting, dismissing some of the findings outright—even intuitive ones. In response to a question on concerns about Instagram’s addictive nature—a phenomenon that most Instagram users could attest to—Mosseri asserted that, “Respectfully, I don’t believe that research suggests that our products are addictive.” (TechCrunch)
During his testimony, Mosseri said Instagram is planning to bring back a version of its news feed that would give users the option to sort media chronologically rather than ranked according to the platform’s algorithm, potentially addressing concerns over how algorithms push users into harmful rabbit holes. (CNN)
