Instagram uses ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach on under‑13 users’ safety: Ex-Meta Engineer in US court

New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS) A former Meta engineering director testified in a US federal court that Instagram took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to children under 13, prioritising user engagement and growth over safety, accusing the company of harming young users, according to multiple reports.

Arturo Bejar — who has previously testified before Congress on child safety — said during his second day on the stand that Meta measured employee performance and compensation largely by engagement metrics such as user numbers and time spent on the platform.

“In that context, safety was an afterthought,” he said according to the reports.

Bejar also testified that his research found “tens of thousands” of children under 13 using Instagram and that it was “common knowledge” within the company that such young users were using the application.

The trial that pits Meta against California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, saw Bejar pointing out that Meta had sophisticated systems to detect fake accounts but it did not have any “goals or metrics” for employees to detect and check the ages of children suspected to be under 13.

The states leading the charge in federal court are among 29 that sued the tech giant in 2023, accusing it of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features that encouraged children to become addicted to its platforms.

Reports suggest that the lawsuit also alleged that Meta routinely collected data from children under 13 without parental consent, in violation of federal law. Meta has rejected the allegations, saying evidence presented during the trial will demonstrate its commitment to safety.

They further noted that Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt said, “You will hear over the course of this case a lot of important issues, issues like teen mental health, issues like social media, issues like how teens use social media.”

“Those are important issues, and they’re issues where Meta believes that it has a responsibility. It has a responsibility to act on its own. It has a responsibility to try to work with teens and parents in partnership to try to address those questions,” he added.

Bejar also slammed features purportedly introduced by Instagram to make the experience safer for young people, saying these did not work.

Instagram’s Take a Break feature, introduced in 2021, was designed to fail because users had to enable it themselves and could easily dismiss prompts, Bejar noted.

“A safety tool has to be on by default,” he said, adding that if Meta was serious about wanting users to take a break, the feature could not be so easily swiped away with a finger tap.

—IANS

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