Mark Zuckerberg has an image problem - so why is Meta's business booming?

Mark Zuckerberg was just three minutes into his keynote speech at the company's annual Meta Connect product event last month when his tone turned almost wistful.

"Building is an act of love," he said, glancing down at the ground with his hands in his pockets. "It's how we impart what we believe, and we pour our hearts and our souls into what we make."

Speaking to hundreds of analysts and developers, Zuckerberg proceeded to share news about Meta's latest AI products: its new agentic chatbot Muse, a slew of smart glasses, as well as a Tamagotchi-like AI gadget users can attach to their wrists.

It was a conference focused on new technologies - but still, it's perhaps notable that during a presentation lasting nearly an hour, Zuckerberg did not mention two of his most popular products, Instagram and Facebook, the social media platforms that have helped Meta become a $2tn company.

For much of the past year, Meta has been embroiled in a series of legal actions, accused of deliberately designing products that are addictive to young users.

That has led to the release of internal emails, corporate documents and whistleblower testimony that personal injury lawyers and prosecutors across the country have wielded to make their case.

And Zuckerberg is unpopular: last year, a Pew Research Center poll found that two-thirds of Americans had an unfavourable opinion of him.

His reputation is unlikely to be helped by The Social Reckoning, a film by Aaron Sorkin released this week. It's about whistleblower claims that Meta executives were aware of their products harming young people. Succession actor Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg as a "full-on villain", according to a review in the Hollywood Reporter, "stoically arguing that even the slightest gesture of responsibility is anathema where money is concerned".

Some speculate that this is Meta's "Big Tobacco" moment, with a consensus forming against the company, and the social media industry as a whole.

But the truth seems to be more complicated. Despite months of bad press, in the real world Meta's products are doing better than ever. Use of its apps continues to rise, and users are already flocking to its new AI assistant.

It raises the question: can anything really clip Meta's wings? Or is it now something of a 'Teflon' company, with scandals simply bouncing off it?

Meta's 'trust deficit'

It's certainly been a year of bad headlines for Meta.

Last summer, Reuters revealed that Meta allowed its chatbots to "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual", and provide false medical information to users.

Meta has revised those policies and said that such responses should never have been allowed.

And this year, bills have been mounting. In March, a jury gave $6m (£4.5m) to a 20-year-old California woman who claimed she suffered mental health harms related to her use of Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube.

Around the same time, New Mexico became the first state to succeed in a lawsuit against Meta over child safety issues. A jury found the company had failed to warn the public about the dangers its platforms posed to kids. Meta was fined a total of $942m. The judge called Meta a "public nuisance" akin to air pollution.

Meta says it disagrees with the verdicts and is appealing both cases.

In May, Meta was among the social companies that avoided a trial by settling a case brought by a Kentucky school district that claimed their product design had led to a youth mental health crisis. Meta reportedly agreed to pay $9m, the most of any defendant.

And this summer, Meta struck a high-profile $18bn settlement with 48 US states, plus the District of Columbia and three US territories. Meta denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and during the five-day trial it maintained that it had worked extensively over the years to make its platforms safer for young users, pouring resources into testing and research. As part of the deal, the firm promised to enact two-hour daily time limits for young users, along with night-time blocks on use, muted notifications during school hours, and other changes.

The company faces other lawsuits too, including one starting later this month in Los Angeles, also related to alleged social media addiction among young users.

Meanwhile, several countries have moved to ban social media for children entirely, starting with Australia last December. Social media companies are broadly disliked, even while their products remain wildly popular. A Reuters/Ipsos survey suggests that 85% of Americans think social media can be addictive for children, and 61% support greater government oversight.