In the ongoing legal saga over whether Meta's platforms are slowly melting teenagers' brains, the company's lawyers have been busy arguing that certain evidence should be kept from public view under attorney-client privilege. The lawyers suing Meta, however, say that privilege label has been applied with the kind of reckless abandon usually reserved for a toddler with a sticker book.

This week, the plaintiffs pointed to a recently unsealed document showing that the team behind launching Instagram's Teen Accounts in 2024 - internally known as Project Nido - put in an order for baseball caps that simply read "a/c priv." Because nothing says "serious legal protection" like branded swag. The suing lawyers argue this is part of a "culture of privilege abuse at Meta" aimed at keeping internal research on teen harm out of the public eye - an issue Mark Zuckerberg himself discussed after internal data on Instagram's effects leaked in 2021.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers already called some of Meta's privilege redactions "entirely inappropriate" in an order last month. She highlighted one example where Meta's lawyers tried to frame a discussion about a slide deck and whether to publish certain data as a discussion of attorney legal advice. The judge, presumably after a long sigh, decided that based on trial testimony, their hesitation was more about preventing leaks - a business decision, not a legal one.

In April 2025, after discovery, Meta de-designated about 65,000 previously withheld or redacted documents. The plaintiffs say that was too little, too late for them to use in depositions. Now Meta has requested time through the end of this year to re-review other privilege redactions, while the plaintiffs' lawyers argue a neutral party should lead the review - paid for by Meta, naturally.

So to recap: a team launching a product for teens ordered hats that abbreviate "attorney-client privilege," and now a federal judge is unimpressed. The hats, one assumes, are not admissible evidence - but the vibe? The vibe is definitely admissible.