What API and data model would support a new Creator Studio workflow for teen users

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Meta is a social technology company; its products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads, Quest, creator tools, and ads.

Meta is exploring a new Creator Studio workflow tailored for teen users who create, edit, schedule, publish, and manage content across social surfaces. This interview question asks you to define the API and data model needed to support that workflow, with attention to how teen creators differ from adult creators in permissions, safety needs, privacy expectations, and product constraints.

You should assume the workflow may involve drafting content, adding media assets, selecting audiences, collaborating or getting guardian-related approvals where applicable, viewing lightweight performance feedback, and managing account-level eligibility or restrictions. The focus is not on designing the UI, but on the backend product architecture that would let the experience function safely, reliably, and consistently across Meta’s creator ecosystem.

Your answer should clarify the key entities, relationships, API boundaries, request/response patterns, state transitions, and policy checks required to support teen creator actions. You should also consider how the system would integrate with existing identity, content moderation, privacy, notification, analytics, and creator publishing infrastructure.

The experience should consider:

- Core user roles and permissions, including teen creators, viewers, collaborators, guardians or supervised accounts if relevant, and internal systems.

- Data model objects such as creator profile, content draft, media asset, publishing target, visibility setting, consent or restriction state, moderation status, and performance summary.

- API endpoints or service contracts needed for creating drafts, uploading assets, saving edits, submitting for checks, publishing, deleting, and fetching status.

- Privacy, safety, and compliance constraints specific to teen users, including data minimization, age-aware defaults, audience controls, and abuse prevention.

- Reliability and consistency requirements across mobile, web, and backend services, including idempotency, retries, versioning, and failure handling.

- Observability needs such as audit logs, event tracking, moderation outcomes, API latency, error rates, and funnel health.

- Rollout and migration considerations, including feature flags, limited cohorts, backward compatibility, and safeguards if the workflow creates risk.

- Product trade-offs between creator flexibility, safety enforcement, performance, operational complexity, and future extensibility.

The goal is to demonstrate how you would translate a teen-focused Creator Studio product workflow into a practical technical design that is safe, scalable, observable, and aligned with Meta’s responsibilities around creators, social sharing, and youth safety.