Meta employees ordered hats reading 'attorney/client privilege' amid child safety lawsuits
Court filings in lawsuits against Meta reveal that the team behind Instagram's 2024 Teen Accounts launch ordered baseball caps reading 'a/c priv,' which plaintiffs' lawyers call an example of Meta's culture of privilege abuse.
In ongoing lawsuits alleging harm to teens' safety and mental health, Meta's lawyers have repeatedly sought to withhold evidence from public view by claiming attorney-client privilege. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs said this week that the company has applied this designation far too broadly.
As an example, they pointed to a recently unsealed document showing that the team behind launching Instagram's Teen Accounts in 2024, internally known as Project Nido, ordered baseball caps simply printed with "a/c priv."
The plaintiffs' lawyers argue this merchandise reflects a broader "culture of privilege abuse" at Meta, aimed at keeping internal research on teen harm out of public view. The issue traces back to 2021, when internal data on Instagram's effects on users leaked, prompting public comments from Mark Zuckerberg at the time.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers already criticized some of Meta's privilege redactions in an order last month, calling them "entirely inappropriate." In one instance, she found that Meta's lawyers had tried to frame a discussion about a slide deck and whether to publish certain data as legal advice, when testimony indicated the reluctance to publish was actually a business decision meant to prevent leaks.
Meta de-designated roughly 65,000 previously withheld or redacted documents in April 2025, following discovery, but plaintiffs say this came too late to be useful during depositions. Meta has now requested time through the end of the year to re-review its remaining privilege redactions, while plaintiffs' lawyers are pushing for a neutral third party, funded by Meta, to lead that review instead.
