A former engineering director at Meta testified Wednesday that the company pursued a "don't ask, don't tell" strategy regarding users under 13 on its platforms, prioritizing engagement and profit over child safety. Arturo Béjar, who previously worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015 and returned as a contractor from 2019 to 2021, told jurors at a federal trial in Oakland, California, that Meta's product design focused on usage frequency and duration, even if detrimental to users' mental well-being.
"If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money," Béjar stated. He asserted that safety was an "afterthought" in employee performance reviews and compensation, which were largely driven by user numbers and engagement metrics.
The trial, which began Tuesday, involves lawsuits filed by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, alleging that Meta knowingly designed addictive features that harmed youth mental health and violated federal law by collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent. These four states represent a portion of the 29 states that sued Meta in 2023 over child safety and privacy concerns.
Meta has denied these accusations, with company lawyer Paul Schmidt stating Tuesday that Meta acknowledges its responsibility and is committed to working with teens and parents to address issues like teen mental health and social media use.
Béjar, who testified before Congress in 2023 about social media's impact on teen mental health, described features like autoplaying videos and popularity counters as "inherently unsafe for teenagers." He noted that child development experts have identified teenagers as particularly susceptible to social comparison, making popularity-rewarding products potentially harmful.
While Meta maintains that users must be at least 13 to create an account, Béjar testified that his research uncovered "tens of thousands" of children under 13 on Instagram. He described it as "common knowledge" within the company that very young children were using the platform, despite Meta's sophisticated infrastructure for detecting fake accounts. He added that there were "no goals, no metrics" for identifying and verifying the ages of suspected underage users.
Béjar also critiqued Meta's safety features, such as the "Take a Break" tool introduced in 2021. He called it "designed to fail" because it requires users to manually enable it and can be easily dismissed, contrasting it with a safety feature that should be on by default and not so readily ignored.
The states are seeking to alter user experiences on Facebook and Instagram and are pursuing financial damages, which could amount to billions of dollars in penalties. California's attorney general's office stated that if Meta loses, the court would determine the damages, emphasizing that the primary remedy sought is an injunction to stop Meta from offering what they describe as dangerous products to teens and from misleading the public about their platforms' risks.