Ex-Meta engineer says Instagram used 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on under-13 users

A former engineering director at Meta who has previously testified before Congress about child safety on Instagram told jurors on Wednesday, at a landmark trial, that the company took a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to kids under 13 on its platforms.

In his second day of testimony, Arturo Béjar said Meta consistently prioritised profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and how long people used them, even where this harmed their mental wellbeing.

"If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money," he said.

The trial, which began Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, and is expected to run about six weeks. The four states were among 29 that sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy; the remaining 25 will go to trial later. Meta also faces lawsuits in state courts, including one under way in Tennessee, and another in New Mexico that has already produced testimony from Béjar.

The lawsuit accuses Meta of fuelling the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features that addict children to its platforms while concealing the harms from the public. It also alleges Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without parental consent, in violation of federal law.

"The attitude in particular on Instagram was 'don't ask, don't tell,'" Béjar said, describing the company's stance towards under-13 users.

Meta has rejected the claims and says the trial evidence will show its commitment to safety. "You 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," Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt said Tuesday. "Those are important issues, and they're 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."

Plaintiffs' witness says safety was an 'afterthought'

Béjar worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, drawing attention for his efforts to combat cyberbullying. He returned as a contractor from 2019 to 2021 to work on safety issues, and testified before Congress in 2023 that Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, knew of the harms Instagram was causing but chose not to make meaningful changes.

In Wednesday's testimony, Béjar said performance reviews and compensation for staff working on user-facing products focused mainly on user numbers and time spent on the platform. "In that context, safety was an afterthought," he said.

The states are seeking changes to the Facebook and Instagram user experience, as well as financial damages that could run into billions of dollars. In a written statement, the office of California's attorney general said that if Meta loses, any damages would be set by the court. "This 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," the statement said.

Béjar walked jurors through Meta features he said were designed for adults and were "inherently unsafe for teenagers." These included video autoplay, which can expose teens to harmful content even without clicking, and various counters tracking likes, views, comments or followers. Child development experts note that teenagers are more susceptible than adults to social comparison, meaning products that reward popularity can be more damaging to their mental health.

Age verification criticised as insufficient

Meta requires users to be at least 13 to create an account, in line with federal child privacy law. But Béjar testified he had found "tens of thousands" of under-13 children on Instagram through his own research, and said it was "common knowledge" within the company that such young children used the platform.

"Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts," he said, but added there were "no goals, no metrics" for detecting and checking the ages of suspected under-13 users.

Béjar said safety features Meta has introduced over the years have not worked. He cited "Take a Break," launched in 2021, calling it a feature "designed to fail" because users must actively switch it on — something he said few users bother to do, comparing it to an airbag drivers would need to activate manually each time they got in a car. "A safety tool has to be on by default," he said. The feature can also be dismissed with a single tap, which Béjar said undermines any real intent to encourage breaks.