A second Meta Platforms whistleblower has come forward, testifying this week before a Senate subcommittee that the company’s social networks were potentially harming teens, and his warnings to that effect were ignored by top leadership. Arturo Bejar, from 2009 to 2015 a Facebook engineering director and an Instagram consultant from 2019 to 2021, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law that Meta officials failed to take steps to protect underage users on the platforms. Bejar follows former Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who provided explosive Senate testimony in 2021.

Bejar initially shared his allegations against Meta in an interview in The Wall Street Journal in which he claimed “Meta leadership was aware of prevalent harms to its youngest users but declined to take adequate action to address it,” according to CNBC.

Bejar testified to a conversation he said he had with Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, alerting the CPO to research suggesting the platform harms teens. Bejar said Cox expressed awareness of the statistics yet failed to act in what the engineer felt would have been an appropriate manner, which the employee found “heartbreaking.”

Bejar shared with the senators his work emails and highlights of a survey of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram.

Bejar testified that his own 14-year-old daughter had been the target of unwanted advances on the platform, indicating he shared his concerns and factual backup with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.

CNN describes the hearing as “lawmakers unloading on Meta,” which is not something new. The company “fosters a culture of ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ that overlooks evidence of harm internally while publicly presenting carefully crafted metrics to downplay the issue,” CNN said Beja testified.

“Part of the issue, according to Bejar, is that Meta directs resources toward tackling a ‘very narrow definition of harm,’” writes CNBC, noting that “he said that it’s important to break down the prevalence of different harms on the platform to different demographics of users in order to understand the true extent of harm to certain groups.”

U.S. lawmakers are “considering adopting legislation that will significantly curtail the amount of time young people can spend on social media and what they can do and see on various platforms, SiliconANGLE writes.

The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act bill, or KOSA, was introduced in July. In October, 42 U.S. attorneys sued Meta alleging harm including “social media addiction” pertaining to underage users.

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Meta’s Deception About Instagram’s Harmful Qualities Alleged in Massachusetts Suit, The Wall Street Journal, 11/8/23