Arturo Béjar, a former Facebook and Instagram engineer, has become a prominent whistleblower in the ongoing scrutiny of Meta’s handling of user safety and wellbeing, particularly concerning the social media platform Instagram. Béjar’s whistleblowing efforts culminated in multiple testimonies before the U.S. Senate and other legal proceedings, including a major 2023 trial involving allegations that Meta knowingly designed addictive and harmful products targeting minors.

Béjar, who worked at Facebook from 2009 until 2015 and later returned on a consulting basis to Instagram’s wellbeing team in 2019, has shed light on internal company practices that conflicted with public assertions of prioritizing user safety. His concerns came to a head in October 2021, when on the same day Frances Haugen testified to the U.S. Senate after leaking internal Facebook documents, Béjar sent a detailed email to Mark Zuckerberg and other senior executives. The message outlined alarming survey data that painted a much grimmer picture of Instagram’s harms than the company publicly acknowledged. Among the statistics were findings that nearly a quarter of Instagram users aged 13 to 15 reported unwanted sexual advances, over 20% had been bullied on the platform in the prior week, and more than half of all users experienced some form of harmful interaction recently. Despite these figures, reports were rarely acted upon, with only a fraction of harmful content resulting in removal.

Béjar said Zuckerberg never responded to his email. He described Zuckerberg as intensely competitive but lacking empathy for the harms users faced, emphasizing that the Facebook CEO’s primary concern was “impact” and winning rather than user wellbeing. This perspective contrasted sharply with Béjar’s approach, which focused on nuanced tools to encourage positive online interactions. For example, during his tenure, Béjar developed softer content-reporting mechanisms for teens, such as substituting “I don’t want to see this” for “report,” which significantly increased engagement and helped moderate harmful behavior.

Béjar’s motivation to speak out is deeply personal. He cites his daughter’s experience with Instagram, where she and her peers routinely received sexist comments and unsolicited explicit images without effective recourse. This testimony aligns with findings from other cases, including the tragic death of 14-year-old Molly Russell in London in 2017, whose depression was linked partly to social media use, particularly Instagram.

After returning to Meta, Béjar found an environment resistant to change. Despite the wellbeing team developing promising safety tools, they faced internal obstacles and slow or negative review processes. A cultural shift appeared to prioritize user growth and engagement metrics over safety, with features like autoplay video, frequent notifications, and infinite scrolling designed to maximize time spent on the platform. Notably, many of the customer care tools Béjar had helped create earlier were removed or defanged.

One example Béjar recalled underscored this shift: his team designed a tool to gently prompt users with a history of inflammatory posts to reconsider their wording, but concerns about potential ridicule from celebrities led to its shelving. This kind of internal censorship for high-profile users mirrored revelations from the so-called “Facebook Files,” which highlighted privileged treatment for certain accounts.

Since departing Meta again, Béjar has become a key witness for government investigations, calling for greater accountability. In his testimony at the 2023 California trial, he unequivocally criticized Zuckerberg, stating, “You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids.” As Meta continues to face inquiries and public backlash over the societal impacts of its platforms, insiders like Béjar provide a rare glimpse into the tensions between corporate priorities and user safety within one of the world’s largest technology companies.