Another Meta whistleblower steps up

For years, Meta’s Instagram platform has exposed its youngest and most vulnerable users to sexual exploitation, harassment, pro-eating disorder content, and a whole host of other harms. In 2021, whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that Meta executives were fully aware that their platform design was making teens feel worse about themselves and cultivating body image issues amongst teen girls. When faced with that disturbing evidence, Meta executives didn’t act on it – they ignored it. 

Now, two years later, another Meta whistleblower has spoken out, and his revelations paint an even more damning picture of the company. According to former Meta engineer Arturo Béjar, Meta executives – including Mark Zuckerberg – are fully aware of how to make their platforms safer for kids, but they are choosing not to. 

In his November 7 testimony before Congress, Béjar shared how the Well-Being team at Meta collected and presented top executives with research and data indicating that the company’s rules, automated systems, and metrics for determining children's safety were simply inadequate and failing to keep kids safe. Mr. Béjar described the extent of intel that Meta was privy to and the design solutions proposed to fix these problems. Béjar gave his testimony not only as a whistleblower, but also as a concerned father. His own teenage daughter experienced unwanted sexual advances from users on Instagram, an experience he described to be deeply disturbing for both parent and child. 

Most shockingly, Mr. Béjar revealed that Adam Mosseri – the head of Instagram himself – acknowledged and agreed with the child safety issues that the data pointed to. And yet, Meta ultimately did not resolve any of these problems and continued to allow these online harms to persist. 

Meta is blatantly ignoring the evidence as to how their platform design is harming kids. Meta and other Big Tech companies have been playing by their own rules for far too long, and kids like Mr. Béjar’s daughter are getting hurt in the process. This is exactly why the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) needs to be passed to hold Big Tech accountable. We need a new rulebook for social media companies that creates a duty of care for the young people on their platforms in order to significantly mitigate these online harms. 

It’s time for Congress to act in the best interest of children and teens by passing KOSA!