‘Safety was an afterthought’: Ex-Meta engineer’s explosive testimony on Instagram and kids
Former Meta Engineer Tells Court Instagram Treated Child Safety as an Afterthought
Theindiapostdaily.com – In a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, Arturo Bejar — a former engineering director at Meta — delivered what he described as damning evidence about how the company handled children younger than 13 on Instagram. Speaking on the second day of a major trial that opened the previous Tuesday, Bejar characterized the platform's posture toward pre-teens as one of deliberate indifference.
"The attitude in particular on Instagram was 'Don't ask, don't tell,'" Bejar said when asked about the company's approach towards users under 13 years of age.
Engagement Metrics Superseded Well-Being
Bejar alleged that Meta's internal culture rewarded teams primarily on how often and how long users interacted with its products, even when that interaction harmed their mental health. Compensation and performance evaluations for staff building user-facing features, he explained, hinged on metrics tied to user counts and session duration.
"If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money," he said.
Within that incentive structure, he continued, protecting young users became an afterthought.
"In that context, safety was an afterthought," he said.
Under-13 Users: "Tens of Thousands"
Through his own research, Bejar identified tens of thousands of children under 13 active on Instagram. He described it as common knowledge inside the company that such young users were present on the platform, yet noted there were no dedicated goals or metrics in place to verify their ages or flag suspected under-13 accounts.
"Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts," he said, adding that there were "no goals, no metrics" to detect and check the ages of children suspected to be under 13.
Criticism of the "Take a Break" Feature
Bejar also took aim at Meta's "Take a Break" tool, rolled out in 2021. He called it a mechanism "designed to fail," pointing out that users had to manually enable the setting and could dismiss it with minimal effort.
"A safety tool has to be on by default," he said.
The States' Case Against Meta
The trial, which commenced on Tuesday (local time), pits Meta against four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. Those four are among 29 states that filed suit in 2023, accusing the tech giant of knowingly engineering features that drove children into addictive patterns of use and thereby contributed to a youth mental-health crisis. The complaint further alleges that Meta routinely harvested data from children under 13 without obtaining parental consent, in contravention of federal privacy law.
The states are pursuing both structural changes to the user experience on Facebook and Instagram and financial damages that could reach billions of dollars in penalties. ABC News reported the proceedings are expected to run roughly six weeks.
Meta's Position
Meta has pushed back against the allegations, asserting that trial evidence will demonstrate the company's genuine commitment to safety. Speaking on August 17, Meta attorney Paul Schmidt framed the dispute around broader societal questions.
"You will hear over the course of this case a lot of important issues, issues like teen mental health, issues like social media, issues like how teens use social media," Schmidt said.
"Those are important issues, and they're issues where Meta believes that it has a responsibility. It has a responsibility to act on its own. It has a responsibility to try to work with teens and parents in partnership to try to address those questions," he said.
Who Is Arturo Bejar?
Bejar spent six years at Facebook from 2009 through 2015, building a reputation for his work combating cyberbullying. He returned to the company as a contractor between 2019 and 2021, focusing on safety issues. In 2023 he testified before the US Congress on social media and the teen mental-health crisis, stating that Meta executives — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg — were aware of harms Instagram was inflicting yet declined to implement meaningful corrective changes.
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