{"id":646856,"date":"2026-08-20T07:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/646856\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T07:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:35:16","slug":"ex-meta-staffer-testifies-daughter-14-was-prey-on-instagram-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/646856\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Meta staffer testifies daughter (14) was prey on Instagram \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arturo B\u00e9jar spent six years working on child safety tools at Facebook-parent Meta Platforms<\/a>, but told a jury he did not fully understand the threats posed to young users on the platform until his 14-year-old daughter signed up for an Instagram <\/a>account.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe started getting requests for sex and pictures of private parts from people that she did not know,\u201d B\u00e9jar said. \u201cI found it shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

B\u00e9jar testified about his experience during the first day of a historic trial in California, in which a coalition of state attorneys general have accused Meta of deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among youths and collecting data from users under 13 years old, in violation of federal law.<\/p>\n

The stakes at the trial are high. If the company loses, it may face financial penalties ranging from $193 billion (\u20ac165 billion) to $1.4 trillion \u2013 and court orders that could force changes in how it operates its platforms.<\/p>\n

Meta has denied wrongdoing, saying it has continuously improved tools to protect kids and calling the states\u2019 proposed penalties \u201coutlandish.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his time working on safety research at Meta, B\u00e9jar said, executives were well aware of \u201csignificant harms\u201d to young people on its platforms but they repeatedly failed to make changes or introduce features that would have a measurable impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people, in particular, were experiencing harm at high rates and they weren\u2019t getting the attention, investigation, support or remediation that they needed,\u201d B\u00e9jar testified on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9jar started working for Meta in 2009 as a manager overseeing safety, but said he left in 2015 to take care of his teenage children. In 2019, after his daughter\u2019s experience on Instagram, he returned to Meta as an independent contractor working on the platform\u2019s \u201cwellbeing\u201d team.<\/p>\n

He left for good in 2021 \u2013 the same year that Frances Haugen, a former product manager-turned-whistleblower at Facebook, revealed internal documents showing that Meta had long known that its platforms had ill effects on young people, especially girls struggling with their body image.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9jar testified before the US Congress in 2023 about his concerns and has since emerged as a go-to whistleblower witness for states and personal injury attorneys suing Meta and other social media platforms on similar grounds.<\/p>\n

He took the stand in the previous two previous trials against Meta in Los Angeles and New Mexico \u2013 both of which ended with verdicts against Meta. B\u00e9jar also testified in an ongoing trial against Meta in Tennessee, where he was on the witness stand for four days.<\/p>\n

In the current case in federal court in Oakland, California, Meta fought to bar B\u00e9jar from testifying, arguing that he violated evidence rules by using auto-deleting messaging apps to communicate with former Meta employees about the case.<\/p>\n

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on the eve of trial denied Meta\u2019s last-minute motion and allowed him to take the stand.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9jar resumed testifying on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The trial in Oakland is focused on alleged violations of state consumer protection and federal privacy laws, and is being led by attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for the states told jurors on Tuesday that besides B\u00e9jar, they would hear during the trial from half a dozen other ex-Meta employees \u2013 as well as from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri. \u2013 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arturo B\u00e9jar spent six years working on child safety tools at Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, but told a jury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,877,19,876,17,1721,1722,1114,384],"class_list":["post-646856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-facebook","tag-ie","tag-instagram","tag-ireland","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-social-media","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117126687925571169","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}