In the US, Meta team ordered caps with a/c priv inscription — The Verge

In the US, the Meta team that worked on launching Instagram teen accounts in 2024 ordered baseball caps bearing the inscription a/c priv. This is an abbreviation for attorney-client privilege. The information is contained in a recently unsealed court document in cases concerning alleged harm to teenagers’ safety and mental health, The Verge reports.

Plaintiffs’ position

Lawyers representing plaintiffs in cases against Meta said that the company applied attorney-client privilege too broadly in seeking to withhold certain evidence. In their view, merchandise from the Project Nido team — the internal name of the teen accounts team — is an example of a “culture of privilege abuse at Meta.”

The plaintiffs also claim that this practice was intended to prevent Meta’s internal research into potential harm to teenagers from becoming public. The article mentions that Mark Zuckerberg discussed the matter after internal data on Instagram’s impact leaked in 2021.

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Judge’s remarks

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers last month described some of Meta’s privilege-based redactions as “wholly inappropriate.” In one episode, the company’s lawyers characterized discussions of a presentation and a decision to publish certain data as a conversation about legal advice.

However, citing testimony in the case, the judge concluded that the reluctance to publish the data was more likely a business decision connected to preventing leaks. In April 2025, Meta stopped treating about 65,000 documents that it had previously withheld or redacted as privileged. The plaintiffs said this happened too late to use the materials during depositions.