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

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.

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.


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. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.