Arturo Bejar stepped out of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and United States Courthouse this week after delivering scorching testimony in a landmark trial against Meta. A former engineer who spent years working on safety issues within the company, Bejar has become a central figure for a coalition of states, including California and New Jersey, seeking to prove that Meta intentionally designed its platforms to be addictive for children. Throughout his appearance in an Oakland courtroom, Bejar painted a picture of a corporate culture where growth metrics always trumped user well being, claiming that safety was never a meaningful priority for the tech giant.
The heart of Bejar’s testimony focused directly on CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Having interacted with the chief executive dozens of times during his tenure, Bejar told the court that Zuckerberg’s public claims regarding user safety were simply not true. Specifically, he challenged a 2021 post in which Zuckerberg denied prioritizing profit over the mental health of teens. According to Bejar, internal studies clearly flagged the risks teenagers faced on Facebook and Instagram, but any attempts to fix these issues were systematically sidelined if they threatened user engagement or revenue.
Bejar described specific platform features like infinite scrolling and autoplay videos as inherently unsafe for young users, arguing that they are engineered to create compulsive behavior. When questioned about Meta’s existing safety tools, such as Instagram’s quiet mode, Bejar dismissed them as performative measures designed to fail because they are optional rather than default settings. He compared using these tools to having to manually activate a car’s airbag every time someone gets behind the wheel, suggesting that the burden of safety was placed on the child rather than the provider.
Meta has vigorously denied these allegations, with attorneys arguing that the company has always been sensitive to teenage risks and took active steps to mitigate them. During cross examination, Meta lawyers attempted to frame the issue as one of immense technical complexity rather than negligence. However, Bejar remained steadfast, noting that while his colleagues were talented professionals, no significant progress was ever made on solving core safety risks because it conflicted with the company’s bottom line. As this high stakes legal battle continues over the next few weeks, it remains unclear if state prosecutors will call Zuckerberg himself to take the stand.
