Written Responses to Questions for the Record, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism
On April 16, 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams submitted written answers to follow-up questions from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, expanding on her April 9 testimony. Responding to Senator Cory Booker, she described what she called Meta's 'emotional targeting': a practice she says drew on posts, photos, and outside data-broker information to infer when a teen user felt worthless, stressed, or focused on losing weight, then made that inference available to advertisers looking for an optimal moment to pitch a product. She said Meta executives did not, in her experience, show concern for teens' wellbeing, while some employees restricted their own children's use of the company's products. She also said Meta's January 2025 content-moderation changes were unlikely to protect young users, pointing to separate Wall Street Journal reporting on Meta's AI chat tools. TechKids Foundation cites this as a detailed, congressionally submitted account from a named former insider, not as independent verification of every claim in it.
Share of Meta's total revenue Wynn-Williams said, in this written testimony, comes from advertising — part of her explanation for why teens' emotional data was commercially valuable to the company.
Wynn-Williams, Sarah. Responses to Questions for the Record submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, for the hearing "A Time for Truth: Oversight of Meta's Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress," submitted April 16, 2025.