Meta Executives Met to ‘Get the Academic Community to Disavow’ Jonathan Haidt ⇥ cailinoconnor.substack.com

Cailin O’Connor, professor at the University of California Irvine:

Yesterday saw reporting on new, internal Meta documents released through the ongoing lawsuit. Meta had been using a favored industry strategy of including their attorneys on any risky internal correspondence so that this correspondence would be protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge called bullshit.

The resulting documents reveal:

  1. Explicit plans by Meta to discredit psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has been raising alarms about social media and youth mental health.

Candice Odgers, also a professor at the University of California Irvine:

This is why I cannot believe that I have to write this post. Today the London Times wrote an article lazily suggesting that I, and others, were paid by Meta to critique the arguments made by Jonathon Haidt in the Anxious Generation.

So let me say this next part very clearly. I have never been approached by Meta to shape what I say publicly about the research on adolescents and social media. My views are my own, and are grounded in the years of research I’ve done on this topic.

I could not see anything in the unsealed notes (PDF) directly referencing Odgers, nor does the Times article actually claim Meta paid her. It does, however, create the implication that her disputes with Haidt’s book are suspicious by tying them to those meeting notes.

Two things can be true, though. Meta could have attempted to sway opinion among academics and media — one executive hoped they could “get Gellman to write a take-down piece”, referring presumably to Andrew Gelman, who says he has “never been contacted by anyone at Facebook or Meta regarding Jonathan Haidt or his work”. Even if Meta is not getting positive coverage from this “whisper campaign”, the public knowledge of it will poison the waters of this debate. That is unfortunate because of the second thing that can be true: Haidt’s research might not be as solid as he and others believe. But good luck having that conversation now.