Meta staff discussed a 'whisper strategy' to discredit Jonathan Haidt, files show

Meta staff discussed a “whisper strategy” to undermine the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose work helped push the debate on online safety towards stricter rules, according to court documents filed in the US.

Minutes of internal meetings, contained in a recent legal filing, show employees at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram considering how to “get the academic community to disavow Haidt”.

The notes appear in a document titled “Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes”, which refers to turning other academics against Haidt and to “debunking” his work.

March 2023 meeting

Minutes from a meeting on 8 March 2023 mention “Curtiss”, an apparent reference to Meta’s then vice-president of research, Curtiss Cobb. They state: “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.”

The notes add: “Not thinking about this as a loud strategy. A below-the-line campaign.” They also suggest getting someone called “Gellman” to write “a takedown piece”.

The document does not identify the “Gellman” figure. 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”. 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.

Book and influence

Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation argued that widespread smartphone use has caused a mental health crisis for young people. He 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.

Early this year the then UK health secretary, Wes Streeting, asked Haidt to address officials on a possible social media ban for under-16s in the UK. Australia has introduced an under-16 ban.

The minutes were produced before Haidt published his book in 2024 and discuss responding to a Substack post in which he reviewed “a bunch of articles”. It is not clear whether Meta acted on the ideas outlined in the minutes.

Haidt told the tech news website The Verge he was “not surprised” by the discussions, which were revealed in a court filing as part of litigation brought by school districts suing the company. “When companies can’t dispute the evidence, they go after the messenger,” he said.

Source: The Guardian.