Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) blasted Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg on Friday over the tech giant’s “disturbing” move to take down ads from law firms that offered to represent victims of social media addiction.
Meta started yanking ads off Facebook and Instagram in April after losing blockbuster verdicts in Los Angeles and New Mexico that found the company failed to protect kids. One of the ads proclaimed that Meta knew its apps were causing anxiety, depression and self-harm but “kept targeting kids anyway.”
Meta’s ad ban is “nothing more than an attempt to preserve a harmful business model at all costs — one that actively profits off the addiction of this nation’s youth,” the senators wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg, a copy of which was exclusively obtained by The Post.
“In fact, Meta’s actions expressly conflict with its recent policy changes to ‘allow more speech’ and to stop removing or demoting content, except in the most extreme circumstances,” the senators added.
Meta and other social companies are facing unprecedented heat over their failure to protect minors online. The company is a defendant, alongside YouTube parent Google, TikTok and Snap, in more than 2,400 lawsuits in California federal court brought by school districts, state attorneys general and individuals.
In their letter, Blackburn and Klobuchar pointed to Meta’s own internal documents, which showed that the company estimated in 2024 that 10% of its overall revenue – or $16 billion – was derived from scam ads that ran on its apps.
“That Meta makes billions of dollars from fraudulent ads makes clear that Meta is removing these ads only to protect its bottom line,” the senators wrote.
Axios, which first reported on the law firm ad removals on April 9, identified more than a dozen ads that had been scrubbed from Meta’s apps, including solicitations from major law firms like Morgan & Morgan and Sokolove Law.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company would “not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful.”
“We’re actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them,” Stone added.
Stone said Meta has made significant efforts to improve the safety of its apps in recent years, including a rollout of “Teen Accounts” on Instagram.
On March 24, a New Mexico state jury slapped Meta with a $375 million penalty for failing to protect kids from sexual predators. Meta has since threatened to leave the state entirely if a judge orders what it called “impractical” safety updates to its apps.
Elsewhere, Los Angeles state jury found Meta and YouTube owner Google liable for $6 million in damages to a woman called KGM, who alleged that the apps fueled her descent into anxiety and depression.
Blackburn and Klobuchar both endorse the Kids Online Safety Act – a long-stalled piece of legislation that would impose a legal “duty of care” on social media companies, among other standards meant to protect users.
“While we are glad that courts are beginning to hold Meta accountable for its conduct, the systemic change that parents demand and our children deserve must come from Congress and we will not stop until Congress takes decisive action to protect our children from harms that continue to occur across the internet, including on Meta’s platform,” the lawmakers added.
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