They were in a meeting, notes spilling across a shared doc like a rough draft of a conspiracy. I read the shorthand — a plan, not for fixing a product, but for fixing a narrative. You can feel the urgency in the lines: defense by distraction.
I’m writing from those court filings, and I want you to follow what the filings actually show, not the spin. This is about Meta choosing message control over product repair, and the stakes are the mental health of young people and the integrity of public debate.
At a tiny meeting on March 7, 2023, an internal note captured a strategy in shorthand.
The file labeled “Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes” reads like minutes from a PR war room. It names targets, describes tactics, and even coins the phrase “whisper strategy.”
Meta’s team discussed how to sow doubt about Jonathan Haidt — the social psychologist behind The Anxious Generation — rather than addressing the research linking social apps to rising teen anxiety and self-harm. The notes suggest turning “other academics against Haidt” and getting methodologists to “say things more forcefully.”
Did Meta try to discredit Jonathan Haidt?
The court documents make plain that this was considered. The plan was less a public rebuttal and more a campaign to seed criticism quietly so it would surface in media coverage. You can imagine it moving through corridors and opinion pages like a rumor in a hallway.
At a follow-up on March 8, the notes assign people to the problem and name names.
The meeting names Curtiss Cobb, then Meta’s vice president of research, and tasks him with figuring out “how do we get the academic community to disavow Haidt.” That line reads like an instruction to manufacture outrage: “can’t co-opt them, so how do we enrage them.”
They floated recruiting senior academics to pen public refutations. One candidate was listed as “Gellman,” likely a reference to Andrew Gelman of Columbia, who has critiqued Haidt independently. Gelman later wrote that he was never hired by Facebook for any takedown, leaving open whether the outreach happened or the idea died in the meeting.
What is a whisper campaign?
In this context, it’s an attempt to influence conversation indirectly — seed doubt, steer journalists, and rely on other authorities to amplify the message. The plan trades transparency for plausible deniability, a Trojan horse of public relations.
At the center of this is a calculation about risk and reputation.
Meta’s notes treat Haidt’s work as a litigation risk. The team acknowledged his research would appear in lawsuits and discussed neutralizing that risk by discrediting the researcher rather than addressing product harms.
That choice matters. It signals that when faced with a public-health question, leadership prioritized shaping narratives. You should care because this is how powerful platforms defend against accountability: not with design fixes, but with influence campaigns.
Why does Jonathan Haidt matter in these legal fights?
Haidt’s research connects social media use to rising rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among teens. That kind of evidence can be central in court; discrediting it weakens the case against platforms. Meta’s notes explicitly recognize that dynamic and treat academic reputation as a lever.
Other players appear in the margins: Substack, where Haidt expanded his reach; Statmodeling, where Gelman writes; the court filing that revealed the plan; Gizmodo, which sought comment; and researchers like Peter Gray, whose book Restoring Childhood offers counterarguments to Haidt’s thesis.
I’m not arguing Haidt is beyond critique — academic pushback has been robust and public — but I am arguing that private strategy meetings aimed at manufacturing that pushback change the terms of debate. When wealthy platforms decide to shape scientific discourse, the playing field tilts.
This is a story about priorities. Faced with a public-health problem traced to product design, Meta spent time drafting ways to shift the conversation. You can see why critics call it a PR first, product second mentality.
There are two uncomfortable truths here: companies have the resources to influence scholarship and press, and those resources are tempting instruments when litigation looms. That matters for law, journalism, and for families who count on honest reporting about tech risk.
Meta did not answer Gizmodo’s request for comment. You can read the notes yourself and decide whether this looks like damage control or damage concealment.
If the experts, the courts, and the public are all playing on the same field, what happens when the referee is being coached by one of the teams?