Meta faces US lawmaker scrutiny over removal of lawyer ads for social media addiction cases

By Courtney Rozen

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) – Meta should not have removed advertisements from attorneys seeking clients that claim they were harmed by social media platforms, two U.S. senators said on Friday in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Here are some details:

• Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote a letter to Zuckerberg criticizing his company’s choice to purge the ads from its platforms after Axios first reported it and Meta confirmed it.

• The attorneys were trying to recruit new plaintiffs for ongoing lawsuits over social media addiction.

• “We’re actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful.”

• Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of lawsuits accusing the companies of designing platforms that are fueling a youth mental health crisis.

• The removal of the advertisements is “nothing more than an attempt to preserve a harmful business model at all costs,” the senators wrote in the letter.

• Blackburn is running for governor in Tennessee and often touts her work on social media regulation to voters. Klobuchar is running for governor of Minnesota.

(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Aurora Ellis)