Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testified Wednesday at a landmark federal trial in Oakland, California, revealing that Instagram maintained a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach regarding users under 13. The six-week trial pits Meta against four states—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—over child safety, privacy, and addictive product design.
At Meta, that meant aligning compensation and performance reviews strictly around user metrics and session duration. When engagement is the primary key performance indicator, user safety inevitably becomes an afterthought.
The Architecture of Engagement and the Under-13 Blind Spot
“The attitude in particular on Instagram was ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,'” Béjar told jurors, addressing the platform’s enforcement of age restrictions. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, platforms legally require users to be at least 13 years old to create an account. Yet, plaintiffs argue that Meta knowingly collected data on children below this threshold without parental consent.
Béjar previously worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, focusing on cyberbullying initiatives, and later returned as a contractor from 2019 to 2021 to work on safety issues. His testimony builds upon disclosures he brought before the U.S. Congress in 2023. At that time, he asserted that executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, understood the mental health harms tied to Instagram’s design yet declined to implement substantive structural reforms.
Internal incentive structures drove this inertia. According to testimony from the federal courtroom, engineers and product managers working on user-facing features were evaluated on raw user counts and dwell time. “If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” Béjar explained to the court, highlighting the direct economic dependency on compulsive usage loops.
Inherently Unsafe Features Targeted at Vulnerable Demographics
The federal lawsuit, which stems from a 2023 multi-state action involving 29 states—with 25 others slated for future litigation—accuses Meta of fueling the youth mental health crisis. Plaintiffs argue the company deliberately engineered addictive mechanics while concealing those risks from the public. Alongside the federal proceedings, Meta faces parallel actions in state courts, including an active trial in Tennessee.
During the proceedings, Béjar analyzed specific UI elements that he argued were engineered for adults but remain hazardous for developing teens. These include video autoplay mechanisms—which force incoming media onto screens regardless of user initiation—and public metrics counters tracking likes, comments, view counts, and follower totals. Child development experts emphasize that teenagers exhibit higher biological susceptibility to social comparison than adults, making these feedback loops particularly damaging.
Legal representation for Meta has pushed back against these characterizations. Defense attorney Paul Schmidt outlined the company’s defense during opening statements, emphasizing that Meta acknowledges its responsibilities regarding teen mental 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,” Schmidt stated. “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.”
Injunctive Relief and the Broader Regulatory Battlefield
The plaintiff states are pursuing substantial financial penalties, which could stretch into the billions, alongside sweeping structural changes to the user experience across both Facebook and Instagram. Detailing the legal objectives, the office of California’s attorney general released a statement emphasizing the primary remedy sought under state consumer protection laws:
“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 noted.
As the trial proceeds through its anticipated six-week schedule in front of U.S. District Court jurors in Oakland, the technical and legal arguments continue to expose the friction between rapid consumer-software scaling and regulatory compliance. With federal scrutiny mounting and internal engineering practices exposed on the public record, the outcome could redefine how social media giants handle age verification, data collection, and algorithmic engagement mechanics for minor users.
