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Introduction: A Reckoning Over the Cost of Engagement
For more than a decade, Facebook and Instagram have transformed how billions of people communicate, socialize, consume news and build online communities. But behind the endless scrolling, recommendations and notifications lies a question that is becoming increasingly difficult for the technology industry to avoid: What happens when maximizing engagement conflicts with protecting children?
That question is now at the center of one of the most consequential legal battles Meta has faced. In a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar delivered a deeply critical account of the company’s approach to youth safety, arguing that growth and user engagement were repeatedly given greater importance than protecting young people.
Béjar’s testimony is particularly significant because he is not an outside critic who simply studied Meta from a distance. He previously worked inside the company and later returned as an independent contractor focused on the wellbeing of teenage Instagram users. During his testimony, he described an organization in which major product decisions were heavily influenced from the top and argued that safety improvements could move quickly when Mark Zuckerberg personally made them a priority.
The allegations are serious, but they remain allegations in an ongoing trial. Meta has denied wrongdoing and maintains that it has invested heavily in safety, age restrictions and tools intended to protect teenagers.
The case therefore goes beyond one executive, one company or one social-media platform. It raises a much larger question about the business model of modern technology: Can a platform genuinely prioritize child safety when its economic engine depends on keeping people engaged?
The Landmark Trial Putting Meta Under the Microscope
The federal trial in Oakland was brought by a coalition of 29 U.S. states, including California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The states accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram in ways that encouraged young users to remain engaged while allegedly contributing to serious risks for their mental health.
The allegations include claims that Meta knew young people could experience harmful effects from its products but failed to make sufficient changes. The states also accuse the company of misleading consumers about safety and improperly collecting personal information from children under 13.
The trial is expected to last roughly six weeks and carries potentially enormous consequences. The jury is expected to provide an advisory verdict, while U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will ultimately determine whether Meta is liable and what remedies or civil penalties could follow.
The case is therefore not simply another lawsuit against a technology company. It represents a broader legal examination of whether the design choices behind social-media platforms can themselves become the subject of consumer-protection and child-safety liability.
Arturo Béjar: A Witness With an Inside View
Béjar worked at Meta from 2009 to 2015 before returning between 2019 and 2021 as an independent contractor examining the experiences of teenage Instagram users.
His history with the company gives his testimony unusual weight. He has previously testified before Congress and has become a prominent critic of Meta’s approach to youth safety.
During his testimony, Béjar portrayed a company in which product decisions could change rapidly when Zuckerberg personally prioritized them.
His message to the jury was simple but powerful: If Meta’s leadership truly wanted a safety problem fixed, the company had the resources and organizational power to do it.
Béjar described this dynamic by saying that when Zuckerberg made something a priority, “mountains move in months.” That characterization forms an important part of the states’ argument because it challenges the idea that safety problems were simply too technically difficult or organizationally complicated to solve.
The Zuckerberg Question
One of the most striking moments involved
After former Meta employee Frances Haugen publicly accused the company of knowing about serious risks associated with its platforms, Zuckerberg defended Meta’s record and said the company continually used research to improve its products.
Béjar strongly disputed that characterization.
According to his testimony, he personally contacted Zuckerberg to raise concerns about youth safety. He described Zuckerberg’s public statements as deeply inconsistent with what he believed was happening internally.
The courtroom clash is therefore about more than a disagreement between two executives. It raises a fundamental corporate-governance question: What does leadership actually know, when do leaders know it, and what do they do after learning it?
Those questions can become especially important in litigation when a company has internal research, employee warnings and documented safety concerns that appear to conflict with public statements.
A Father’s Experience Turned Into Evidence
Béjar’s testimony also became intensely personal when he discussed his teenage daughter.
He said he helped her establish an Instagram account without initially understanding the level of harassment she might experience. His daughter wanted to create a community where women could discuss cars, but according to Béjar, she encountered misogynistic comments, including sexualized remarks about her body.
She was 16 in 2021 when Béjar contacted Zuckerberg about the issue.
His testimony illustrated an uncomfortable paradox: even someone deeply familiar with online safety could underestimate how quickly an ordinary social-media experience could become harmful.
Béjar said he watched the distress his daughter experienced while also watching her audience grow.
That contradiction is central to the broader debate surrounding social media. The same metrics that indicate a successful account—followers, comments, interactions and engagement—can sometimes coexist with experiences that are psychologically damaging.
Meta’s Safety Teams Are Not Being Ignored
Béjar’s testimony was not an argument that nobody at Meta cares about safety.
Under questioning from
This distinction matters.
The central issue is not necessarily whether Meta has safety engineers, researchers, moderators or policy teams. Large technology companies clearly do.
The harder question is how much authority those teams have when their recommendations conflict with growth objectives, product priorities or engagement metrics.
A company can have thousands of talented safety professionals and still struggle if safety decisions are consistently treated as secondary to business goals.
The Profit Over Safety Allegation
Béjar told attorneys representing the states that
One of the examples he discussed was
Béjar argued that the feature was ineffective because users had to activate it and reminders could easily be ignored.
His broader criticism was not that the feature does nothing. Instead, he questioned whether a safety mechanism can be considered genuinely effective if the platform’s default design continues encouraging people to remain engaged.
This distinction is crucial.
A company can technically offer safety controls while simultaneously designing the primary user experience around continuous interaction. The existence of a safety feature does not automatically prove that the overall product experience is safe.
The Under-13 Problem
Another major allegation concerns children younger than 13.
Meta’s platforms have long maintained minimum-age requirements, but enforcing those requirements across massive global platforms is extraordinarily difficult.
Béjar testified that Meta had technology capable of identifying potentially underage users at scale but alleged that the company avoided aggressively confronting the problem because doing so could reduce its long-term business opportunities.
He described this as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach.
That allegation is particularly significant because children under 13 receive additional protections under U.S. federal privacy law, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
If a court determines that a platform knowingly collected information from children without complying with applicable requirements, the consequences could extend far beyond public criticism.
Internal Research Adds Another Layer
After Béjar completed his testimony, jurors heard recorded testimony from Meta researcher Elena Davis.
Davis had studied the potentially habit-forming nature of social media.
Her research reportedly concluded that Facebook could be modified to reduce its potential to become habit-forming and could provide support for people who wanted to break unwanted usage habits.
That evidence could become important because it shifts the debate away from whether social media can theoretically cause harm and toward a more concrete question:
Did Meta know about potential risks and possess practical options for reducing them?
The difference is enormous from a legal perspective.
Knowing that a risk exists is one thing. Knowing about a risk while possessing the ability to mitigate it can create a much more complicated legal and ethical situation.
Why Engagement Metrics Matter So Much
At the heart of the controversy is an economic reality that applies far beyond Meta.
Social-media companies make money by attracting users, keeping them active and showing them advertising or other monetized content.
That means engagement is not simply a technical measurement.
It is often directly connected to revenue.
Time spent on a platform, the number of interactions, frequency of visits, content consumption and advertising opportunities can all become valuable business metrics.
This creates a potential structural conflict when safety interventions reduce engagement.
A notification that encourages someone to stop scrolling might be beneficial for wellbeing—but from a purely engagement-driven perspective, it can represent fewer minutes on the platform.
That tension is precisely why regulators and courts are increasingly examining the architecture of social media rather than focusing exclusively on individual pieces of harmful content.
The New Mexico Case Raises the Stakes
The Oakland trial is unfolding shortly after a major legal setback for Meta in New Mexico.
In August 2026, a New Mexico court ordered Meta to provide a total of $942 million in monetary remedies and imposed sweeping court-supervised changes intended to improve protections for young users.
The amount combines a $375 million civil penalty previously awarded by a jury with an additional $567 million ordered as part of the court’s remedies. The New Mexico judgment also requires changes to Facebook and Instagram designed to improve protections for children.
That ruling is particularly important because it demonstrates that lawsuits concerning youth safety are no longer purely theoretical threats.
Courts are already imposing financial consequences and demanding operational changes.
Thousands of Lawsuits and a Bigger Industry Crisis
Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits involving alleged harm to young people.
The broader litigation wave is increasingly forcing technology companies to confront questions that were once treated primarily as matters of corporate policy.
Should social-media platforms have stronger default protections for teenagers?
Should age verification become more sophisticated?
Should infinite scrolling be restricted for children?
Should certain recommendation systems operate differently for minors?
Should parents have greater visibility into how their children interact with platforms?
And perhaps most importantly, who should decide the answers—the technology companies themselves, regulators, courts or parents?
The Meta litigation suggests that society may be entering a period in which courts increasingly participate in answering these questions.
Meta’s Defense Cannot Be Ignored
Although
Meta has defended its record and argues that it has invested heavily in protecting young users. The company maintains that it has safety teams, age restrictions, reporting mechanisms and tools designed to reduce harmful experiences.
Meta has also argued that preventing underage users from lying about their age is a difficult technical and social problem.
That defense matters because the Oakland court has not yet issued a final determination on the allegations described in this testimony.
The ultimate legal question is therefore not whether Béjar’s testimony is emotionally compelling. It is whether the evidence presented throughout the trial establishes that Meta violated applicable laws.
The Bigger Question: Is the Product Designed for Safety?
The most important issue may ultimately be the design philosophy behind social media.
Imagine two platforms with identical moderation teams.
One platform makes safety tools automatic, difficult-to-bypass and highly visible.
The other requires users to discover those tools manually while the platform continuously encourages more interaction.
Both platforms could claim to have safety features.
But their philosophies are fundamentally different.
This is why the current litigation could influence the technology industry far beyond Meta.
If courts decide that product design itself can create legal liability when it foreseeably contributes to harm, every major social platform could eventually be forced to reconsider how it builds experiences for young users.
Deep Analysis: What the Technology Reveals
Engagement Is Not a Neutral Metric
From an engineering perspective, engagement can look harmless.
A product team may measure daily active users, session duration, retention, clicks and interactions.
But once those measurements become tied to revenue, they can influence what gets built next.
Infinite Scroll Changes Human Behavior
Infinite scrolling removes a natural stopping point.
Traditional websites often required users to reach the bottom of a page before deciding whether to continue.
Modern feeds can continuously supply another piece of content.
The result is a dramatically different behavioral environment.
Recommendation Engines Intensify the Loop
Recommendation algorithms learn what captures attention.
The system can then prioritize material likely to produce another interaction.
That creates a feedback loop:
User interacts
↓
Algorithm observes behavior
↓
System predicts preferred content
↓
More engaging content is recommended
↓
User spends more time online
↓
More behavioral data is collected
↓
Recommendations become more personalized
Safety Can Become an Optimization Problem
A platform could theoretically optimize for multiple objectives:
maximize:
user satisfaction
meaningful interaction
safety
privacy
healthy usage
subject to:
legal requirements
age restrictions
abuse prevention
The challenge is deciding what happens when those objectives conflict.
If maximizing engagement consistently wins, safety may become secondary even when safety teams exist.
Default Settings Matter
A safety tool that requires users to discover, activate and repeatedly maintain it will naturally reach fewer people than a protection enabled by default.
This is basic product-design logic.
Defaults influence behavior.
That is why regulators increasingly care about whether protections are automatic rather than merely available.
Age Verification Is Technically Difficult
Identifying whether someone is under 13 is not as simple as asking for a birth date.
Users can provide inaccurate information.
Platforms can examine behavioral signals, account history, device information and other indicators, but every additional signal can create privacy concerns.
This produces another difficult balance:
Better age assurance
↓
Potentially more privacy-sensitive data
↓
Greater protection for children
↓
Greater regulatory and privacy responsibility
There is no completely frictionless solution.
AI Will Make This Debate Even Bigger
Artificial intelligence is likely to become increasingly important in age assurance, content moderation and child-safety systems.
Platforms can use machine-learning models to detect suspicious behavior, identify harmful content and estimate whether an account may belong to a minor.
A simplified defensive workflow might look like:
Example conceptual workflow — not Meta-specific
python age_risk_scoring.py \n--signals account_age,behavior,network,content \n--risk-threshold high
The important point is that AI should not be treated as an automatic solution.
Models can make mistakes.
False positives can restrict legitimate users, while false negatives can allow children to remain exposed to harmful environments.
Security and Privacy Must Work Together
Child protection cannot simply mean collecting more information about children.
A system that aggressively gathers sensitive identity data may create another security problem.
The better architecture is one that minimizes stored information while still providing strong age assurance.
For example:
Identity verification
↓
Age eligibility confirmed
↓
Minimal result retained
↓
Sensitive identity data deleted or isolated
↓
Child-specific protections activated
The Real Test Is Measurable Outcomes
The technology industry has historically talked extensively about intentions.
But intentions are difficult to measure.
Outcomes are easier to examine.
A stronger safety program should therefore track measurable indicators such as:
Conceptual safety metrics
python safety_metrics.py \n--underage-detection \n--harassment-rate \n--response-time \n--repeat-abuse \n--teen-wellbeing
The question should not simply be:
“Do we have a safety system?”
It should be:
“Does the safety system actually reduce harm?”
What Undercode Say:
- The Most Important Part Is the Incentive Structure
This case is ultimately about incentives as much as technology.
- Meta Can Have Excellent Engineers and Still Have a Safety Problem
The existence of safety employees does not prove that safety always wins organizational disputes.
3. Engagement Is the Central Conflict
The more time users spend online, the more opportunities platforms generally have to monetize that activity.
4. Children Are Particularly Vulnerable
Young users may lack the experience needed to recognize manipulation, harassment or unhealthy usage patterns.
- Default Protections Matter More Than Optional Features
A safety mechanism that requires users to find it may protect fewer people than one enabled automatically.
- The “Take a Break” Debate Is Bigger Than One Feature
The controversy illustrates the difference between offering a safety tool and redesigning a product around healthier behavior.
- Age Verification Will Become a Major Technology Battlefield
Platforms will increasingly be pressured to determine whether users are minors.
8. But Age Verification Creates Privacy Risks
Collecting more identity information can create new cybersecurity and surveillance concerns.
9. AI Could Help
Machine learning can detect behavioral patterns humans would struggle to identify at scale.
10. AI Could Also Fail
Bad models can incorrectly classify users or overlook sophisticated abuse.
11. Safety Needs Independent Measurement
Companies should not be the only entities deciding whether their own safety programs work.
12. Transparency Is Becoming Essential
Independent audits could provide regulators and parents with better evidence.
- The New Mexico Judgment Changes the Conversation
The recent $942 million ruling demonstrates that youth-safety litigation can produce substantial financial and structural consequences.
14. Legal Pressure Is Becoming Cumulative
Meta is not dealing with one isolated lawsuit.
Multiple cases can create overlapping legal and operational pressure.
15. Product Design Is Now Evidence
The architecture of a platform can become part of the legal debate.
16. Infinite Scroll Deserves More Attention
Removing natural stopping points can make disengagement more difficult.
17. Notifications Can Create Another Feedback Loop
Frequent alerts can bring users back even when they had already left.
18. Recommendation Systems Need Guardrails
Algorithms should not optimize exclusively for attention when children are involved.
19. Teen Accounts May Need Different Architectures
A minor should not necessarily receive the same product experience as an adult.
- Safety Should Be Built Into the Default Experience
Users should not need technical knowledge to protect themselves.
21. Parents Cannot Carry the Entire Responsibility
Expecting every parent to understand constantly changing platform features is unrealistic.
22. Platforms Have More Technical Resources
Large technology companies can analyze billions of interactions in ways individual families cannot.
23. That Creates Greater Responsibility
More capability can reasonably produce higher expectations.
24. The Business Model Cannot Be Ignored
Safety discussions become incomplete when revenue incentives are left out.
25. Shareholders Also Matter
Companies face pressure to grow, retain users and maintain profitability.
26. That Pressure Can Influence Product Priorities
The question is whether safety can maintain equal authority.
27.
If leadership controls major strategic priorities, executive decisions can influence the entire product organization.
- But Leadership Must Be Judged by Evidence
A witness’s allegations should not automatically become established conclusions.
- The Trial Needs a Full Evidentiary Record
Documents, internal communications, research and testimony all matter.
30.
The company has legitimate arguments about technical limitations and the difficulty of policing enormous platforms.
- Yet Technical Difficulty Is Not the End of the Discussion
A difficult problem can still require serious mitigation.
32. The Industry Needs Better Safety Engineering
Safety should be treated as a core product requirement rather than a post-launch patch.
33. Cybersecurity Provides a Useful Parallel
Security teams learned that vulnerabilities cannot simply be addressed after attackers exploit them.
34. Child Safety Needs the Same Philosophy
Potential harms should be anticipated during product design.
- “Secure by Design” Could Become “Safe by Design”
The principle is similar.
36. Regulation May Accelerate That Change
Companies often move faster when legal requirements become clear.
- The Next Generation of Platforms May Look Different
Future social networks could place stronger restrictions around recommendations, notifications and usage patterns for minors.
38. AI Will Complicate the Picture
Generative AI, chatbots and recommendation systems could introduce entirely new categories of risks for children.
39. The Stakes Extend Beyond Meta
Whatever happens in Oakland could influence how regulators approach other technology companies.
40. The Real Victory Would Be Prevention
The most meaningful outcome would not be a large fine.
It would be a technology industry where protecting children is treated as a fundamental engineering requirement rather than a competing business objective.
✅ The Oakland Trial Is Real and Involves 29 States
Reuters and other reporting confirm that Meta is facing a major federal trial in Oakland brought by a coalition of 29 U.S. states over allegations involving youth safety, addictive design and child privacy.
The
✅ Arturo Béjar Did Work at Meta and Later Returned as a Contractor
Béjar worked at Meta from 2009 to 2015 and later returned as an independent contractor focused on teenage Instagram users between 2019 and 2021.
His previous work and testimony before Congress make him a significant witness in the states’ case.
✅ The $942 Million New Mexico Figure Is Correct
The original
That judgment also includes court-supervised reforms intended to improve protections for children on Facebook and Instagram.
⚠️ The Claims About Zuckerberg Prioritizing Growth Remain Allegations
Béjar testified that Zuckerberg fostered an environment in which growth and engagement outweighed safety, but that characterization is part of the states’ case and has not been established as a final finding in the Oakland proceeding.
Meta disputes the allegations and points to its safety investments and policies.
⚠️ Claims That Safety Features Were “Designed to Fail” Are Testimony, Not Established Fact
Béjar characterized certain safety mechanisms in extremely strong terms.
Those statements should therefore be attributed to his testimony rather than presented as an independently proven fact.
❌ It Would Be Incorrect to Say Meta Has Already Been Found Liable in the Oakland Case
The trial is ongoing.
The ultimate determination has not yet been issued, meaning claims about liability should remain clearly identified as allegations until the court reaches a final decision.
Prediction
(+1) Child Safety Will Become a Core Product Requirement
The legal pressure surrounding Meta is likely to push the technology industry toward stronger default protections for young users.
Platforms will increasingly be expected to demonstrate not only that safety tools exist, but that those tools actually work.
(+1) Age Assurance Will Become More Sophisticated
AI-assisted age estimation, behavioral signals and privacy-preserving verification are likely to become increasingly common as regulators demand better protection for minors.
(+1) Teen-Focused Product Design Will Expand
Major platforms are likely to introduce more restrictions around recommendations, messaging, notifications and potentially addictive engagement mechanisms for younger users.
(+1) Independent Safety Testing Will Gain Importance
Governments and regulators may increasingly demand outside audits and measurable evidence that child-safety systems reduce harm.
(-1) The Industry Could Face Higher Compliance Costs
Stronger age verification, auditing, moderation and safety engineering will require substantial investment.
Smaller platforms may struggle to afford the same level of infrastructure as technology giants.
(-1) Privacy Trade-Offs Could Become More Difficult
If platforms respond to child-safety demands by collecting more identity and behavioral information, regulators could face a new dilemma: protecting children without creating massive databases of sensitive personal information.
(-1) Legal Uncertainty Will Continue
Even if Meta implements stronger safeguards, thousands of existing lawsuits and future cases could continue testing where responsibility lies between platforms, parents, users and regulators.
The Bigger Battle Is Just Beginning
The testimony of Arturo Béjar has placed an uncomfortable question at the center of the technology industry: When a platform knows that certain design choices can increase engagement while potentially increasing harm, which objective should come first?
That question cannot be answered by adding another parental-control button or publishing another safety report.
It requires examining the architecture of the product itself.
The Oakland trial is therefore bigger than Facebook and Instagram. It is a test of whether the companies that design the world’s most influential digital environments can be held responsible for the consequences of those designs.
Meta has the resources to build sophisticated safety systems. Its engineers can deploy changes at extraordinary scale. Its leadership can move entire organizations when priorities change.
The question now being tested in court is whether that enormous technological power was consistently directed toward protecting young users—or whether growth and engagement sometimes came first.
And as social media becomes increasingly intertwined with artificial intelligence, personalized recommendations and digital childhood, the answer could shape the rules of the internet for years to come.
Source context: Reuters, with additional verification against current reporting and official New Mexico court-related statements.
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