{"id":51361,"date":"2026-11-13T15:34:51","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T14:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/meta-discussed-attacking-jonathan-haidt-now-even-his-haters-are-annoyed\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T15:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T14:34:51","slug":"meta-discussed-attacking-jonathan-haidt-now-even-his-haters-are-annoyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/meta-discussed-attacking-jonathan-haidt-now-even-his-haters-are-annoyed\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta discussed attacking Jonathan Haidt \u2014 now even his haters are annoyed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three years ago, Meta apparently considered a plan to turn public opinion against one of its most influential opponents, Jonathan Haidt. But since the proposal was revealed in court filings last month, it\u2019s backfired. In fact, if there\u2019s one thing <em>Anxious Generation<\/em> author Haidt and his critics can agree on, it\u2019s being mad at Meta.<\/p>\n<p>Recent court filings in California revealed that Meta employees had discussed in 2023 a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/policy\/1020012\/meta-jonathan-haidt-social-media-mental-health\">Whisper strategy<\/a>\u201d to \u201cturn academics against Haidt,\u201d who would soon publish a bestselling book arguing that platforms like Meta\u2019s were hurting kids. Haidt had spent years popularizing his theory that social media and smartphones are to blame for the decline in teens\u2019 mental health, including in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecoddling.com\/better-social-media\">his 2018 book<\/a> <em>The Coddling of the American Mind<\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.judiciary.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/Haidt%20Testimony.pdf\">before Congress in 2022<\/a>. To counter it, Meta apparently considered a \u201cBelow-the-line campaign,\u201d including one idea to \u201cGet Gellman to write a take-down piece\u201d \u2014 possibly a reference to Columbia University statistics and political science professor Andrew Gelman, who\u2019d previously publicly critiqued Haidt, though the spelling differs.<\/p>\n<p>Meta employees had discussed in 2023 a \u201cWhisper strategy\u201d to \u201cturn academics against Haidt\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear if Meta ever acted on the strategy those employees appeared to consider.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"echo_read_more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/policy\/1032645\/jonathan-haidt-critics-response-meta\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0More Info >>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three years ago, Meta apparently considered a plan to turn public opinion against one of its most influential opponents, Jonathan Haidt. But since the proposal was revealed in court filings last month, it\u2019s backfired. In fact, if there\u2019s one thing Anxious Generation author Haidt and his critics can agree on, it\u2019s being mad at Meta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":51362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","wpai_meta_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[344,36,110,1799,426,405],"class_list":["post-51361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech","tag-meta","tag-mixtv","tag-policy","tag-report","tag-social-media","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}