{"id":5636,"date":"2026-08-20T12:39:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T12:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5636"},"modified":"2026-08-20T12:39:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T12:39:41","slug":"instagram-took-dont-ask-dont-tell-approach-to-kids-former-engineer-testifies-and-pay-was-tied-to-keeping-them-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5636","title":{"rendered":"Instagram took \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u2019 approach to kids, former engineer testifies \u2014\u00a0and pay was tied to keeping them online"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>During his second day of testimony,\u00a0Arturo B\u00e9jar\u00a0said Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5634\">Trump\u2019s Canada tariff threat produces a deal with no public terms<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The trial that began Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey and is expected to last about six weeks. The four states were among 29 that\u00a0sued the tech giant\u00a0in 2023 over child safety and privacy \u2014 the other 25 will go to trial later. The company also\u00a0faces lawsuits\u00a0in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit accuses Meta of contributing to the youth\u00a0mental health crisis\u00a0by knowingly and deliberately designing features that\u00a0addict children\u00a0to its platforms and hide these harms from the public. It also argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents\u2019 consent, in violation of federal law.<\/p>\n<p>Meta says users must be at least 13 years old to create an account, in line with the law, called the Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe attitude in particular on Instagram was \u2018Don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u2019\u201d B\u00e9jar said in response to a question about his perception of the company\u2019s attitude towards users under 13.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The company has rejected the claims and said evidence at the trial will show its commitment to safety.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will hear over the course of this case a lot of important issues, issues like teen mental health, issues like social media, issues like how teens use social media,\u201d Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt said Tuesday. \u201cThose are important issues, and they\u2019re issues where Meta believes that it has a responsibility. It has a responsibility to act on its own. It has a responsibility to try to work with teens and parents in partnership to try to address those questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h4>Plaintiffs\u2019 witness says safety was an \u2018afterthought\u2019<\/h4>\n<p>B\u00e9jar worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, attracting wide attention for his work to combat cyberbullying. He returned from 2019 to 2021 as a contractor to work on safety issues. He\u00a0testified before Congress in 2023\u00a0about social media and the teen mental health crisis, saying that Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, knew about harms Instagram was causing but chose not to make meaningful changes to address them.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In his testimony Wednesday, B\u00e9jar said employee performance reviews and compensation for those who worked on user-facing products were mostly focused on user numbers and how long they spend with those products.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIn that context, safety was an afterthought,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The states are seeking changes to user experiences for Facebook and Instagram as well as financial damages, which could include billions of dollars in penalties. In a written statement, the office of California\u2019s attorney general said if Meta loses, the amount of any damages would be set by the court.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5633\">Portfolio review takes on a new urgency for VCs as AI makes 2024\u2019s great deals look like 2026\u2019s clear mistakes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis case is about stopping Meta from offering a dangerous product to teens, and from lying to teens, families, and the public about the dangerousness of their platforms. The primary remedy under our state consumer protection law is an injunction,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>B\u00e9jar walked through Meta features he said were designed for adults and are \u201cinherently unsafe for teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>This includes video autoplay, which can mean teens see videos that may cause them harm even if they don\u2019t click on them; as well as various counters that track how many people liked, viewed or commented on your content or how many followers you have.<\/p>\n<p>Child development experts have noted teenagers are more susceptible to social comparison than adults, so products that reward popularity can be more harmful to their mental health.<\/p>\n<h4>Age verification has been criticized for not going far enough<\/h4>\n<p>Despite Meta\u2019s statements that it works to find kids under 13 on its platforms and ban them, B\u00e9jar testified that he found \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of kids under 13 on Instagram through his research. He said it was \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d at the company that such young children were on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts,\u201d he said. But despite that, he added, there were \u201cno goals, no metrics\u201d to detect and check kids\u2019 ages who were suspected to be under 13.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Over the years, Meta has introduced features it says are designed to make the experience safer for young people. But B\u00e9jar said these did not work.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, a\u00a0tool called \u201cTake a Break,\u201d introduced in 2021, is a feature that is \u201cdesigned to fail,\u201d he said. First, it is a setting that people have to turn on if they want to use it. B\u00e9jar said that in his experience building settings, very few users actually go through the trouble of turning them on. He compared it to an airbag that drivers have to turn on every time they get in a car.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cA safety tool has to be on by default,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The feature can also be dismissed with a tap of a finger. If Meta was serious about wanting users to take a break, B\u00e9jar said, it would not be so easily swiped away.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5631\">AI is becoming a financial engineering business<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,\u201d Arturo B\u00e9jar testified. It had the tools to know better, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meta"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Instagram took \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u2019 approach to kids, former engineer testifies \u2014\u00a0and pay was tied to keeping them online - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5636\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Instagram took \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u2019 approach to kids, former engineer testifies \u2014\u00a0and pay was tied to keeping them online - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cIf you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,\u201d Arturo B\u00e9jar testified. 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