Arturo Béjar, a former engineering director at Meta Platforms, testified on the 19th that CEO Mark Zuckerberg fostered a corporate culture in which child safety on Facebook and Instagram took a back seat to growth and engagement. In a lawsuit brought by a coalition of states alleging that Meta's platforms were designed in ways that harm young people's mental health, Béjar said Zuckerberg was deeply involved in many internal decisions, and that under the top-down culture, product design changes were not made unless he directed them. He also said Meta prioritized user engagement and profit over safety, and criticized tools meant to encourage users to take breaks as being designed to fail because they were not set by default and reminders were easy to ignore. He further testified that although the company had technology capable of identifying millions of users suspected of being under 13, it adopted a policy of turning a blind eye in order to boost long-term profits.
Meta Platforms Inc.Testimony alleges Meta prioritized growth over child safety, potentially leading to legal and regulatory consequences.
