Meta ‘doesn’t care if more youngsters die’

Ex-director slams Facebook owner

AN ex-Meta director says he does not think the tech giant cares if more young lives are lost due to posts on its social media platforms.

Whistleblower Arturo Béjar said the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner’s experts could easily stop recommending harmful content to youngsters, but chooses not to.

He said if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to make Instagram “as free of selfharm content as we can make it, then it would happen within a few months”.

Mr Béjar, Meta Director of Engineering from 2009 to 2015 and a contractor from 20192021, said: “They created this product that billions of people use and gives you a personally curated list of things that they think you’ll find interesting.

“Don’t tell me that company cannot make it so you can’t find a choking challenge or that you don’t recommend grim content to a 13 year old.”

Asked if he thinks Meta cares if more people die because of harm they encounter on their platforms, he said: “I think they don’t. That is hard for me to say, but I just go by their actions.”

Mr Béjar has met Ian Russell, father of Molly, 14, who took her own life after viewing harmful content on Instagram.

He said the company or even Mr Zuckerberg should have invited Mr Russell, who wants the Online Safety Bill strengthened, to discuss “what we can do so this doesn’t happen again”. Mr Béjar, left, said: “That’s the responsible thing to do.” Meta’s Andy Stone said: “We strongly disagree with Mr Bejar’s assertions. We are deeply committed to helping keep teens safe online and have developed more than 50 tools and features to do just that.” Meta is proposing a framework for federal legislation in the US that would require parents to control under-16s’ downloads from the App store.