OAKLAND, California — A former Meta engineering director who has repeatedly warned that the company knew about serious problems affecting young users returned to the witness stand Wednesday, becoming a pivotal figure in a landmark federal trial that could reshape how Instagram and Facebook operate.
Arturo Bejar, who worked at Meta from 2009 to 2015 and later returned as an independent contractor from 2019 to 2021, is the first witness in the high-stakes Oakland trial. He previously worked on research examining teenagers’ experiences on Instagram and told jurors that Meta’s internal approach to measuring safety failed to capture the extent of harm young people were reporting.
Bejar testified that Meta focused heavily on measuring how frequently users encountered content that violated company policies rather than measuring the actual harm users experienced.
He said that distinction created a potentially serious blind spot inside the company.
“Young people were experiencing harm at extraordinarily high rates,” Bejar told jurors.
The testimony places one of Meta’s former insiders at the center of a legal battle that could have enormous consequences for the social-media industry.
What the states are accusing Meta of
The lawsuit is part of multidistrict litigation involving 29 U.S. states. The current trial, however, is being led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey.
The states accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram in ways that encouraged compulsive use among young people, while allegedly misleading the public about the risks associated with its platforms.
The states also allege that Meta improperly collected and used personal information from children under 13, raising questions under federal and state child-protection laws.
Prosecutors argue that features including infinite scrolling, personalized recommendations, notifications, likes and image-enhancing filters were designed or refined in ways that could maximize engagement, particularly among vulnerable younger users.
The allegations are broader than any single teenager’s experience. Unlike individual personal-injury lawsuits, this case is focused on whether Meta’s product decisions and representations about safety violated the law on a systemic level.
Bejar’s testimony could become a major flashpoint
Bejar is not a new figure in the growing legal fight over social media and youth safety.
He testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2023, where he accused Meta of being aware of harassment and other problems affecting teenagers while failing to adequately address them. He has also appeared as a witness in other litigation involving alleged youth harms linked to Meta’s platforms.
His return to the witness stand is particularly significant because Meta had attempted to prevent him from testifying.
The company argued that Bejar had failed to preserve certain communications, including messages exchanged with former Meta employees on Signal. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta’s effort to exclude him, allowing the former engineer to testify.
That decision means jurors will hear directly from a former insider as the states attempt to establish what Meta knew about the experiences of young users and how the company responded.
Meta strongly rejects the allegations
Meta has denied the states’ claims and says it has taken substantial steps to improve safety for teenagers and remove underage users from its services.
The company has argued that evidence presented by the states is being taken out of context and that internal research was conducted precisely because Meta was trying to understand how to better support young people online.
Meta has also challenged the scale of the states’ financial demands and argued that the allegations do not establish that the company intentionally harmed young users.
The company’s defense will be closely watched because the case could ultimately affect not only financial penalties but also the design and operation of Facebook and Instagram.
The stakes could reach hundreds of billions of dollars
The potential financial exposure is enormous.
The states have indicated that damages could reach roughly $200 billion, while Meta has argued that the maximum theoretical exposure could be substantially higher — potentially as much as $1.4 trillion under the states’ interpretation of the applicable penalties.
But money may not be the biggest long-term concern for Meta.
The states are also seeking changes to the way the company’s platforms operate. If regulators and courts ultimately force significant changes to features that drive engagement, the consequences could extend to Meta’s products, advertising business and broader technology strategy.
The jury is expected to issue an advisory verdict, while Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will determine Meta’s liability and could order penalties or changes to the company’s practices.
The trial comes after another major Meta defeat
The Oakland case arrives as Meta faces mounting legal pressure over youth safety.
Earlier this month, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay another $567 million in a youth-safety case. Combined with an earlier award, Meta’s financial liability in New Mexico reached $942 million, according to current reporting. The company has indicated it plans to appeal.
Meta has also suffered a separate $6 million verdict in a California case involving a young woman who alleged that social-media use contributed to serious mental-health problems.
Meanwhile, thousands of lawsuits involving Meta and other major social-media companies continue to work their way through U.S. courts.
Parents are watching closely
Outside the Oakland courthouse, parents and advocates gathered with a banner containing the names of nearly 600 young people whom advocates say died following social-media-related harms, including suicide after cyberbullying or sextortion.
The families are not direct plaintiffs in the Oakland case, but many see the proceedings as a critical test of whether technology companies can be held accountable for the way their platforms are designed.
For them, the trial represents something larger than a corporate dispute: a fight over whether social-media companies should be required to make youth safety a fundamental part of product design.
Why this trial could change social media
The central question now goes beyond whether individual features on Instagram or Facebook can be harmful.
The bigger question is whether a technology company can be held legally responsible when its own internal research allegedly identifies risks to young users — and whether failing to sufficiently respond to those risks amounts to a violation of consumer-protection or child-safety laws.
That makes Bejar’s testimony particularly consequential.
The former Meta engineer is offering jurors a window into how the company measured youth safety, what its internal research allegedly revealed and how concerns were communicated to leadership.
And as the six-week trial unfolds, the evidence presented in Oakland could determine far more than Meta’s financial liability.
It could help establish a new legal boundary for how the world’s biggest social-media platforms are allowed to design products used by children and teenagers.
For Meta, the question now is not simply what its platforms do to young users — but what the company knew, when it knew it, and what it did about it.
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