Mark Zuckerberg defends Instagram
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The owner of Instagram and Facebook has been testifying in a landmark legal case over social media addiction, which could pave the way for future hearings.
Also on the programme: Les Wexner, who gave Jeffrey Epstein his own fortune to manage and who was pivotal in his rise as a financier, has told a Congressional inquiry he was naive and was duped, but not himself involved in sexual abuse. And the widow of the Hollywood actor Chadwick Boseman tells us about the revival of "Deep Azure," a play he wrote twenty years ago, in London.
(Picture: Mark Zuckerberg arrives in court. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello and welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.8 | We're coming to you live from the BBC studios. |
| 0:15.3 | In London, I'm Sean Lay. |
| 0:17.8 | Mark Zuckerberg has rejected allegations that social media companies are promoting a product |
| 0:22.9 | they know to be addictive. Mr Zuckerberg, Chief Executive of Meta, whose brands include Facebook, |
| 0:28.6 | was giving evidence to a court in Los Angeles in the case which accuses Instagram, one of |
| 0:33.2 | Meta's social media platforms, as well as YouTube, of being engineered to encourage addictive behavior. |
| 0:39.4 | He arrived at Los Angeles Superior Court passing a media scrum. |
| 0:43.5 | Mr. Zuckerberg, did met up purposely design the platform to harm children. |
| 0:47.4 | Excuse me, you got to keep walking. |
| 0:53.4 | Well, campaigners who've got to keep walking. You're going to stay. |
| 0:54.4 | Come down to the way. Keep player. |
| 0:57.4 | Keep players. |
| 0:58.0 | Well, campaigners who've got more controls on social media have a series of cases before U.S. courts at the moment. |
| 1:03.3 | Lawyers hope this one, brought in the jurisdiction where many of the companies are based, |
| 1:07.2 | will be a bellwether, heralding a change in the way courts treat big technology companies |
| 1:11.3 | like meta. |
| 1:12.8 | The argument they advance is that platforms are designed to foster compulsive use to the point |
| 1:17.7 | of making them addictive and that the resources the companies say they've committed to |
| 1:21.6 | protecting users online are so inadequate to the task that they amount to little more than |
| 1:26.2 | window dressing. |
... |
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