A newly unsealed court document shows that the team behind Instagram's Teen Accounts ordered baseball caps reading “a/c priv” — shorthand for attorney-client privilege — and lawyers suing Meta say it captures a broader problem with how the company withholds internal research.
The image appears in a filing in the long-running litigation over alleged harm to teenagers' safety and mental health. The team, internally known as Project Nido, launched Teen Accounts in 2024. The caps carry no Meta or Instagram branding.
Plaintiffs argue the swag is evidence of a “culture of privilege abuse at Meta” aimed at keeping internal research on teen harm out of public view — an issue that drew attention when internal Instagram data leaked in 2021. Meta's lawyers have argued that certain material should be withheld on privilege grounds; the plaintiffs say the label has been applied far too broadly.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has already pushed back. In an order last month, she called some of Meta's privilege redactions “entirely inappropriate,” citing one message about whether to publish certain data that had been withheld as legal advice. “There is no indication that the ‘we' referenced is legal — in fact, neither the speaker nor the other employees in the chat are lawyers,” she wrote, finding that the reluctance to publish was a business decision to prevent leaks.
The plaintiffs also note that Meta de-designated about 65,000 previously withheld or redacted documents in April 2025 — a move they say came too late for them to use in depositions. The dispute is part of a wider wave of litigation in which platforms are being asked to account for how they studied — and handled — evidence of harm to young users.
