A former Meta engineer turned whistleblower testified in federal court in Oakland this week that the company's leadership treated child safety as "an afterthought" behind growth metrics, opening a landmark trial that could reshape how social media platforms are held accountable for harm to minors.
Arturo Béjar, who spent eight years at Meta working on product safety across two stints, is the first witness called by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which are suing the company in a case expected to run roughly six weeks. The states allege Meta deliberately engineered Facebook and Instagram — through features like infinite scroll, autoplay video and "like" counters — to maximize compulsive use among teenagers, and that it collected data from children under 13 without parental consent in violation of federal law.
"Safety was an afterthought"
Béjar testified that employee performance reviews and compensation for staff working on user-facing products were tied overwhelmingly to metrics like "teen time spent," which he said left little institutional incentive to fix known harms. Opening statements from the states described a "hook, hold, harvest, hide" pattern, backed by internal documents including a 2016 email listing "teen time spent" as an explicit Instagram goal.
"Based on my experience at Meta, that is not an accurate statement."
Arturo Béjar, responding to Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 claim that Meta does not prioritize profit over safety
Béjar also testified that Meta had built technology capable of flagging millions of suspected under-13 users but adopted what he described as a "don't ask, don't tell" approach because removing them would hurt engagement and long-term revenue. He called safety tools such as Instagram's "quiet mode" ineffective because they are optional rather than switched on by default, and said internal research repeatedly documented risks to teenagers that went unaddressed.
Meta pushes back
Meta's attorneys have disputed the states' characterization of internal documents as selectively quoted, and argued in opening statements reported by the Detroit News that the company has "talked over the years about people struggling with social media" and has since introduced privacy defaults, usage timers and parental supervision tools for teen accounts. On cross-examination, defense counsel pressed Béjar on his team's authority and whether the specific risks he flagged had, in fact, been addressed by later product changes.
The Oakland case is one of several youth-safety suits Meta is now fighting simultaneously, including a related action in New Mexico tied to child exploitation on its platforms. A verdict against the company could expose it to significant damages and force design changes to two of the world's most-used apps; testimony is expected to continue for weeks, with additional whistleblowers and Meta executives likely to take the stand.
