Meta’s legal fight in New Mexico moved deeper into the details on Tuesday, as prosecutors began presenting video depositions of top executives to the jury and used them to press allegations that the company failed to disclose risks to children tied to its platforms, including Instagram. The New Mexico case seeks to show that dangers such as social-media addiction and child sexual exploitation were not properly addressed or disclosed, according to prosecutors’ theory of the matter.
In opening statements earlier in the trial, Meta attorney Kevin Huff challenged those assertions, highlighting efforts he said Meta makes to weed out harmful content and warning that some content still passes through its safety net. Huff also argued that Meta discloses the risks, while prosecutors prepared to show the jury internal materials and testimony framed as evidence that Meta knew more than it revealed.
On March 3, prosecutors presented a video deposition in which they asked Instagram leader Adam Mosseri about Meta’s approach to safety and about how the company weighs corporate interests alongside product choices. Prosecutors peppered Mosseri with questions that ranged from social-media features affecting young users to policies they said could contribute to sleep deprivation and unwanted communications between teens and adults, as well as potential negative effects linked to cosmetic beauty filters.
Counsel for the state repeatedly asked Mosseri whether Instagram should do “everything it can” to keep teens safe. Mosseri responded that “I think we should do what we can,” and he said that Instagram’s scale means some problematic content will still appear, telling the jury: “So for instance, problematic content will be seen.”
Mosseri also discussed Meta’s internal position on the balance between safety and revenue. Under deposition, he said that at Meta “we will prioritize safety over profits,” and prosecutors juxtaposed that statement with internal audits, emails and messages they said related to proposed Instagram features intended to change how teens used the app or to interrupt negative social comparisons—features prosecutors said weren’t always adopted.
A separate line of questioning focused on how Instagram handled adults amid concerns tied to child sexual exploitation. Pressed about what the platform should do, Mosseri described what he said was “proportional risk mitigation.” He testified that Meta “carved out a subset of adults that we thought might be more likely to be problematic,” and he said the company attempted “to identify a subset of adults that might be risky and then remove them from … accounts you should follow.”
Alongside the safety-focused questions, Mosseri discussed social media’s benefits, including connecting family members across continents. He also acknowledged that Instagram can make unwanted recommendations, including an example prosecutors used to illustrate the point—content about babies shown to a woman after a miscarriage—and he cited Instagram’s “recommendations reset” as a solution he said the platform offers.
The New Mexico trial and another case underway in Los Angeles could influence how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies play out, prosecutors argued in framing the broader stakes of the litigation. Zuckerberg has previously testified in Los Angeles about young people’s use of Instagram, and during congressional testimony in 2024, Mosseri and Zuckerberg have faced questions about youth safety on Meta’s platforms.
During his earlier congressional testimony, Zuckerberg apologized to families whose lives he said were upended by tragedies they believed were caused by social media, while he stopped short of taking direct responsibility. Mosseri’s deposition testimony in the New Mexico courtroom also included pushback on the idea that social media platforms can be clinically addictive, reflecting his views presented in earlier proceedings. “I’m not a scientist, but I don’t believe the latest science suggests that social media platforms are addictive,” he said.