Zuckerberg says he went to Tim Cook to discuss ‘child and youth welfare’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified this week in what is considered a landmark trial affecting social media mental health. As part of that testimony, Zuckerberg revealed that he contacted Apple CEO Tim Cook to talk about “the welfare of youth and children.”

The lawsuit itself was brought by New Mexico against Meta, saying that the social media company “failed to protect applications such as Facebook and Instagram from online attackers who target child users,” as described by. CNBC last week.

The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleges that Meta “directed and connected users – including children – to pornographic material, child sexual exploitation and abuse and human trafficking” within the state.

“What we really suspect is that Meta has created a dangerous product, a product that allows not only the targeting of children, but the exploitation of children in virtual environments and in the real world,” Torrez told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

The case is one of several high-profile cases involving Meta this year that could have a major impact on the company and the wider telecommunications industry. Experts say that lawsuits like those brought by “Big Tobacco” in the 1990s, are due to the alleged harm the products can have on users, and the efforts of tobacco companies to mislead the public about the negative effects.

As reported by CNBCdefense attorneys in the case questioned Zuckerberg about an email exchange between him and Cook in February 2018.

“I thought there were opportunities that our company and Apple could do and I wanted to talk to Tim about that,” explained Zuckerberg. “I care about the welfare of the youth and children who use our services,” he said when explaining the content of the email.

There are no further details about the content of the exchange between Cook and Zuckerberg. Cook and Zuckerberg are believed to have a contentious relationship, although the exchange in February 2018 predates some of the worst. The public feud between the two began in earnest in March 2018, when Cook made several public comments about Facebook’s privacy controversies.

This is the second time Cook’s name has appeared as part of this case in court. In an email obtained earlier this month, Zuckerberg suggested that Meta should do a little research on how its platforms harm users, surprisingly citing Apple as a model to follow.

Meta and Apple disagree on how app age verification should be handled. Meta believes that age verification should be the responsibility of Apple and Google, not social media companies. Apple, on the other hand, believes that the responsibility for age verification should fall more on developers. Apple says the right place to address age verification and data throttling first is at the individual app level, not the market level.

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