A former Meta employee testified before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, claiming that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram was aware of harassment and other dangers facing teenagers on its platform but failed to address them.
The employee, Arturo Bejar, worked on wellness for Instagram from 2019 to 2021 and was previously director of engineering for Facebook’s Protect and Care team from 2009 to 2015, he said.
Bejar testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law at a hearing on social media and its impact on adolescent mental health.
“It’s about time the public and parents understand the true extent of the dangers posed by this ‘product’ and it’s time young users have the tools to report and block abuse online,” he said in a written statement prepared before the hearing.
Bejar’s testimony comes amid a bipartisan push in Congress to pass legislation that would require social media platforms to provide parents with tools to protect children online.
Former Meta employee Arturo Bejar testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law at a hearing on social media and its impact on teen mental health.AP
The goal of his work at Meta is to influence the design of Facebook and Instagram in ways that will push users toward more positive behavior and provide tools for young people to manage unpleasant experiences, Bejar said at the hearing.
Meta said in a statement that it is committed to protecting young people online, showing its support for the same user survey Bejar cited in his testimony and its creation of tools such as anonymous notifications of potentially hurtful content.
“Every day many people inside and outside of Meta are working to help keep young people safe online,” Meta’s statement said. “All this work continues.”
Executives have decided “time and again not to address this issue,” Bejar testified. Above, CEO Mark Zuckerberg.REUTERS Bejar’s testimony comes amid a bipartisan push in Congress to pass legislation requiring social media platforms to provide parents with tools to protect children online.AP
Bejar told senators that he met regularly with senior executives at the company, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, and thought they were supportive of the work at the time. However, he later concluded that executives had decided “time and again not to address this issue,” he testified.
In a 2021 email, Bejar flagged to Zuckerberg and other top executives internal data that revealed that 51% of Instagram users had reported having a bad or dangerous experience on the platform in the past seven days and that 24.4% of kids aged 13-15 have reported receiving unwanted sexual advances.
He also told them that his own 16-year-old daughter had been sent misogynistic comments and pornographic photos, without adequate tools to report the experience to the company. The existence of the email was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In a 2021 email, Bejar flagged to Zuckerberg and other top executives internal data that revealed that 51% of Instagram users had reported having a bad or harmful experience on the platform in the past seven days.AP
In his testimony, Bejar recounted that in one meeting Meta’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox was able to quote accurate statistics about teenage harm off the top of his head.
“I find it heartbreaking because it means they know and they’re not acting on it,” Bejar said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
