Meta (Facebook & Instagram)

Reasons to avoid

1. Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging it designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children and violated federal child privacy law, reaching a final agreement with a coalition of 52 attorneys general across U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia. As part of the deal Meta must impose default time limits and nighttime blocks for teen accounts, drop like counts for minors, and submit to independent audits of its safety claims.techcrunch.com2026-08-26
2. Instagram promised to remove harassment videos secretly filmed with Meta AI smart glasses after facing criticism over pickup artist content that targeted strangers without their consent. A Business Insider investigation found dozens of these videos still live on the platform weeks later, with some removed only after reporters flagged them directly.businessinsider.com2026-08-16
3. A New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a state fund for teen mental health treatment and prevention after finding its platforms a significant contributing cause to a youth mental health crisis. The order follows a March 2026 jury verdict in the same case that found Meta liable for $375 million under the state's consumer protection law for misrepresenting the safety of its platforms to young users.reuters.com2026-08-06
4. Meta ran a mandatory program called the Model Capability Initiative that collected keystrokes, mouse movements, and screen content from employee laptops to train AI models, with limited options to opt out. More than 1,600 employees signed an internal petition warning the program was an invasion of privacy and a security risk, and those concerns proved valid when a misconfiguration exposed the data company-wide.wired.com2026-06-22
5. Unsealed court filings allege an internal 2022 Meta audit found Instagram's recommendation feature suggested 1.4 million potentially inappropriate adults to teenage users in a single day, even as the company publicly denied awareness of such harms.time.com2025-11-22
6. The FTC sued Meta alleging it bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014 specifically to neutralize competitive threats. Internal emails showed Zuckerberg wrote that he could 'neutralize' rivals through acquisition rather than compete on merit.cnbc.com2025-04-11
7. Amnesty International filed an SEC whistleblower complaint in 2025 alleging Meta misled shareholders about its role in the 2017 Rohingya genocide. Despite a UN conclusion that Myanmar's generals should face genocide charges, Meta has refused to pay even the $1 million in reparations requested.amnesty.org2025-02-17
8. A 2023 Wall Street Journal investigation found Instagram's recommendation algorithm was actively connecting a network of pedophiles, and researchers following just a handful of account suggestions found their test accounts immediately flooded with sellers of child sexual abuse material.cnbc.com2023-06-07
9. Meta's content moderators in Nairobi, contracted through Sama, were paid as little as $1.46 an hour to review graphic violence and child abuse material. When 184 workers organized to demand better conditions, Sama shut down the entire moderation team and the workers sued, alleging they were fired in retaliation.restofworld.org2023-05-22
10. The Washington Post revealed in 2022 that Meta paid Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory to plant op-eds and letters to the editor in local newspapers, including the Denver Post and Des Moines Register, falsely portraying TikTok as a danger to American children.washingtonpost.com2022-03-30
11. The Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg personally approved a 2017 algorithm change that was redesigned to hit left-leaning news sites harder, after executives worried the original version would disproportionately affect conservative outlets. Mother Jones said the change cost it $400,000 to $600,000 in annual revenue.salon.com2020-10-29
12. The FTC fined Meta $5 billion in 2019, the largest privacy fine ever imposed on any company, after Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from 87 million Facebook users without consent and used it to target voters in the 2016 presidential election.ftc.gov2019-07-24