Meta staff discussed deploying a “whisper strategy” to undermine the influential US academic whose work has inspired a global social media crackdown , according to court documents.

Employees at the parent group of Facebook and Instagram sought to discredit Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation , a book that helped tip the debate about online safety towards more stringent measures such as the under-16 ban in Australia.

Minutes of internal meetings contained in a recent legal filing in the US showed that staff discussed how to “get the academic community to disavow Haidt”.

They appear in a document titled “Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes”, which refers to discussions of how Meta could “turn other academics against Haidt” and to a “whisper strategy” aimed at achieving that goal. It also mentions “debunking” his work.

Minutes from a meeting on 8 March 2023 mention “Curtiss”, an apparent reference to Meta’s then vice-president of research, Curtiss Cobb.…