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Former Meta engineer resumes testimony in landmark trial over social media’s harm to young users

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Aug 19 : A former Facebook engineering director and vocal critic of Meta Platforms who has accused the company of ignoring internal research on the harm its platforms can cause children and teens will continue his testimony on Wednesday in a trial that could remake Instagram and Facebook.

Arturo Bejar, who worked at Meta from 2009 to 2015 before returning to the company as an independent contractor from 2019 to 2021, is the first witness in a landmark trial over claims brought by a coalition of states accusing the company of designing its platforms to addict young users, misleading the public about their safety and illegally collecting data from users under 13.

Meta, which denies the states’ allegations and says it stands by its efforts to protect teens, has argued that Bejar’s opinions are beyond the scope of his work at the company.

Bejar first took the stand at the Oakland, California federal courthouse on Tuesday after each side made its opening statements in the trial, which is currently scheduled to last six weeks.

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Bejar, who helped run surveys of teen experiences as part of a team examining well-being on Instagram between 2019 and 2021, said he flagged concerns about the platform’s impact on young users to Meta leadership.

Bejar said Meta’s internal surveillance was flawed because it focused on the prevalence of content that violated company policies, not how much harm it caused.

 He read jurors an email he had sent to Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox, highlighting a supposedly substantial gap between the prevalence that Meta reported and actual harm that users reported.

“Young people were experiencing harm at extraordinarily high rates,” he said. “A parent would have wanted to have known” that reality, he said.

A KEY WITNESS

At the trial, California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are accusing Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook young users, fueling anxiety, depression and even suicide, and misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety. The trial also includes claims from 29 states that Meta violated federal law by improperly collecting and using personal data of children while they used its platforms.

Experts have said the trial is the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.

Meta is facing thousands of similar lawsuits over alleged harm to children, and Bejar has been a key witness against the company in the three of the cases that have gone to trial so far. One of those cases, brought by New Mexico, resulted in $942 million in damages and penalties and an order requiring Meta to make changes to its platforms in the state.

Bejar has been outspoken about his criticism of Meta’s safety record for children and testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2023 that the Facebook and Instagram parent company was aware of harassment and other harms facing teens on its platforms but failed to address them. 

Meta had unsuccessfully sought to block Bejar’s testimony, arguing that he failed to preserve evidence by deleting communications with other former Meta employees on Signal, in part citing comments he made in a still-ongoing Tennessee trial.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is presiding over the Oakland trial, rejected that effort, calling it a long-shot bid to eliminate a key witness.

Source: Reuters

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