Facing a wave of lawsuits alleging its platforms harm youth mental health, Meta has strongly defended its safety record by unleashing a coordinated, high-school-style harassment campaign against social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
Newly unsealed court documents reveal that in March 2023, the technology giant attempted to neutralize Haidt’s criticisms of Instagram by isolating the New York University professor from his peer group. Internal memos detail a "whisper strategy" in which Meta executives planned to slide into the direct messages of rival academics to casually mention that Haidt had been talking trash about their recent methodology papers.
Our platforms are built to connect people, and in this case, we wanted to connect the broader scientific community around the shared realization that Jonathan is a total loser who nobody even likes.
According to the filings, the company’s communications stack included a detailed roadmap for deploying subtle, algorithmic social exclusion at scale. Engineers were tasked with quietly suppressing Haidt's invites to key sociology symposiums. A separate team was directed to artificially amplify posts suggesting the 56-year-old thought leader was obsessed with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and honestly just jealous.
The documents also outline a deprecated initiative to create a fake finsta account that would leave vague, passive-aggressive comments on the psychologist’s published peer-reviewed journals.
The multimillion-dollar corporate whisper campaign was reportedly paused only after Meta’s legal team informed executives that antitrust regulations prevented them from physically shoving the bestselling author into a locker.