Facebook Whistleblower Testifies to Senate of 'Harm Posed' by Platform

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Arturo Béjar, a former employee at Meta-owned Facebook, testified on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law regarding child safety on social media platforms.

Details: Béjar stated before the committee, “It's time that the public and parents understand the true level of harm posed by these 'products' and it's time that young users have the tools to report and suppress online abuse.” Béjar told the Associated Press (Lean Left bias) that from his experience working at Facebook, he “can safely say that Meta’s executives knew the harm that teenagers were experiencing, that there were things that they could do that are very doable and that they chose not to do them,” adding, “we can’t trust them with our children.” Béjar encourages social media platforms to add a feature to “give the teen a chance to say ‘this content is not for me’ and then use that information to train all of the other systems and get feedback that makes it better.”

Meta Response: Meta released a statement responding to the hearing, reading, “Every day countless people inside and outside of Meta are working on how to help keep young people safe online. The issues raised here regarding user perception surveys highlight one part of this effort, and surveys like these have led us to create features like anonymous notifications of potentially hurtful content and comment warnings.”

How the Media Covered It: Outlets across the spectrum covered the testimony mildly but similarly.

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On the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, a former engineering director at the social media giant who had rejoined the company as a consultant sent an alarming email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.

Arturo Béjar, known for his expertise on curbing online harassment, recounted to Zuckerberg his own daughter’s troubling experiences with Instagram. But he said his concerns and warnings went unheeded. And on Tuesday, it was Béjar’s turn to testify to Congress.

A former Meta (META.O) employee is testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, alleging that the Facebook and Instagram parent company was aware of harassment and other harms facing teens on its platforms but failed to address them.

The employee, Arturo Bejar, worked on well-being for Instagram from 2019 to 2021 and earlier was a director of engineering for Facebook's Protect and Care team from 2009 to 2015, he said.