Meta just agreed to pay $18 billion to settle claims that it knowingly harmed children on Instagram and Facebook. The number is staggering, but the detail that stuck with us was smaller: a former Meta researcher testified that when his team pushed to turn a teen safety feature on by default, his manager told him not to worry about low adoption rates — because “the team exists partially to protect the company against the upcoming lawsuits.”
The safety features were always available. They just weren’t defaults, because defaults cost engagement. That’s not a bug in Meta’s execution. I would argue it’s a feature of their business model.
UDP is built on the opposite premise. We don’t have an engagement algorithm to protect. There’s no ad revenue that depends on your kid spending another 20 minutes scrolling. The features that protect your family’s privacy and limit exposure aren’t buried in settings — they’re the defaults, because that’s how UDP Social is built from the ground up. It’s the very bones of the network itself: no algorithm, no “engagement” – other than what you find engaging with whom you choose to engage.
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