Instagram head testifies before Congress

Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted to lawmakers that there was a loophole in a default privacy setting meant to protect teens on the platform.

For users under the age of 16, the company has said that newly created accounts are private — meaning other users must request to follow them in order to view their content — by default. But GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, ranking member of the subcommittee, said her office created an account for a hypothetical 15-year-old girl ahead of the hearing on the web browser version of Instagram and the account was set to public by default.

"Isn't the opposite supposed to happen?" Blackburn said "And have you considered turning off the public option altogether for minor accounts?"

Mosseri said he learned of the issue with the privacy default Wednesday morning, hours before the hearing.

Adam Mosseri's prepared testimony covers a range of steps Instagram has taken to help keep users safe, from making it harder for young people to receive unwanted messages from adults to restricting advertising so that marketers can only target minors based on age, gender and location.

Here are a few key excerpts from the head of Instagram's opening remarks, where he stated he firmly believes that Instagram "can be a positive force in young people's lives."

On using age verification as a way of keeping young users safe:

Mosseri stated that users under the age of 13 are not permitted on Instagram, and that the platform is trying to build new technologies to find a remove accounts belonging to those under 13.

Additionally, Instagram will launch its first set of controls for parents and guardians in March, he said.

Calling for more industry regulation:

Mosseri also stated his support for updated regulations to keep people safe online.

Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee, expressed her frustration around big tech at the hearing. Here are a few excerpts from her opening remarks:

Blackburn also criticized the latest set of product updates Instagram released, calling them "half measures."

"Yesterday, at 3:00 a.m. – which is midnight in Silicon Valley – you released a list of product updates you said would 'raise the standard for protecting teens and supporting parents online.' I’m not sure what hours you all keep in California. But where I’m from, the middle of the night is when you drop news that you don’t want people to see," she said Wednesday. "While I’m sure you know that we fully share the goal of protecting kids and teens online, what we aren’t sure about is how the half measures you’ve introduced are going to get us to the point where we need to be."

The measures are also "a case of too little, too late," she added.

Clad in a dark suit and appearing in person before Senate lawmakers, Mosseri spent a few moments arranging his notes before Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate’s consumer protection subcommittee, kicked things off.

Citing a crisis in teen mental health, Blumenthal said companies like Instagram — along with the algorithms that power it — have built “addictive” products “that can exploit children’s insecurities and anxieties.”

Though Mosseri’s prepared testimony calls for the creation of an industry self-regulatory body to come up with best practices for teen social media, Blumenthal signaled he views that as a nonstarter.

On Monday, Blumenthal said, his office created a fake Instagram account for a teen and began following accounts promoting eating-disorder content — a follow-up experiment to a similar test he ran two months ago. “Within an hour all of our recommendations promoted pro-anorexia and eating disorder content,” Blumenthal said. “Nothing has changed. It’s all still happening.”

As the head of Instagram testifies on Capitol Hill, there is also a bipartisan investigation that's ongoing.

A group of 10 state attorneys general have launched an investigation into Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, focused on the potential harms of its Instagram platform on children and teens.

The announcement made last month follows extensive reporting on a trove of internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Some of those documents show that the company's own researchers have found that Instagram can damage young users' mental health and body image, and can exacerbate dangerous behaviors such as eating disorders.

The attorneys general say they will look into whether, by continuing to provide and promote Instagram despite knowing of the potential harms, Meta violated consumer protection laws and "put the public at risk." The states involved include California, Florida, Kentucky and Vermont.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the allegations made by the attorneys general are false and said they "demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts."

Read the full story here.

As he confronts allegations that Instagram knew it was harmful to young people, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, is expected to counter that the platform has long worked to safeguard the wellbeing of teens, according to Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. 

The issue of social media's impact on teens gained renewed attention this fall after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, some of which showed the company knew how Instagram can damage mental health and body image, especially among teenage girls.

Mosseri is expected to cite the platform's new feature encouraging users to log off after a certain period of time, Stone said, as well as new parental controls that will launch in the spring — both of which were highlighted in a product announcement this week ahead of the hearing. 

In his testimony, Mosseri is also expected to highlight how the company shares its data with external researchers and funds outside studies on the app’s impact, Stone said. (In her own testimony before House lawmakers, Haugen said Meta has routinely “gaslit” outside experts who have documented the company’s harms.)

And, in an echo of his boss Mark Zuckerberg, Mosseri will likely also express support for government regulation of social media as it relates to children, Stone added.

When Sen. Richard Blumenthal's team registered an account as a 13-year-old girl and proceeded to follow some dieting and pro-eating disorder accounts — the latter of which are supposed to be banned by Instagram — the platform's algorithm began almost exclusively recommending the young teenage account should follow more and more extreme dieting accounts

"I have to be thin," "Eternally starved," "I want to be perfect." These are the names of accounts that the platform promoted to the registered account.

Proof that Instagram is not only failing to crack down on accounts promoting extreme dieting and eating disorders, but actively promotes those accounts, comes as Instagram and its parent company Facebook are facing intense scrutiny over the impact they have on young people's mental health.

Instagram acknowledged to CNN that those accounts broke its rules against the promotion of extreme dieting, and that they shouldn't have been allowed on the platform.

Blumenthal's experiment is not an anomaly, and may come as little surprise to regular uses of Instagram who are familiar with how the platform's algorithm recommends accounts that it has determined a user might be interested in.

As Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, testifies on Capitol Hill Wednesday, he's expected to answer questions on reports and accusations such as these.

Read the full story here.

If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, NEDA (in the US) has phone, text, and chat services available on its website and Beat (in the UK) has phone and chat services available on its website.

Just a day before the head of Instagram will face questions from lawmakers over its child safety practices, the company rolled out a handful of new features aimed at making it harder for users, particularly teenagers, to fall down rabbit holes that could be harmful to their mental health.

On Tuesday, the company launched its Take a Break tool, which will encourage users to spend some time away from the platform after they've been scrolling for a certain period. The feature, announced in September, will first come to users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and to all users in the months ahead.

Users can turn on the feature in "Settings" and select if they want to be alerted after using the platform for 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. They'll then get a full-screen alert telling them to close out of the app, suggesting they take a deep breath, write something down, check a to-do list or listen to a song.

CNN Business tested the feature ahead of launch; while it's a step in the right direction, there's still room for improvement.

For example, users have to stay on the platform for one continuous session. If the app closes while you run to the bathroom or the screen turns off while you briefly browse Netflix, the timer resets. After the prompt encourages a break, the onus is on the user to resist hitting the big "done" at the bottom of the message to return to the app.

Vaishnavi J, Instagram's head of safety and well-being, said the feature is still in its early stages and will expand its functionality in 2022.

Instagram also said it will take a "stricter approach" to what content it recommends to teenagers and actively nudge them toward different topics if they've been dwelling on something — any type of content — for too long. While the company said it'll share more about the feature soon, a screenshot shared with CNN Business ahead of the announcement revealed that topics such as travel destinations, architecture and nature photography will be used to divert attention. The feature will launch next year.

Read more about the features here.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, is testifying at 2:30 p.m. ET before the the Senate's Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security.

The hearing is titled "Protecting Kids Online: Instagram and Reforms for Young Users," and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, chairs the subcommittee.

"News reports, whistleblower revelations, and academic research are providing a clearer view of the impact of social media applications on children and teens, especially on their mental health and wellbeing," according to a description of the hearing on the subcommittee website.

The issue of social media's impact on teens gained renewed attention this fall after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, some of which showed the company knew how Instagram can damage mental health and body image, especially among teenage girls.

Facebook has repeatedly tried to discredit Haugen and said her testimony in Congress and reports on the documents mischaracterize the company's actions. But the outcry from Haugen's disclosures pressured the company to rethink the launch of an Instagram app for children under 13.

CNN's Samantha Murphy Kelly contributed reporting to this post.