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On the eve of the 29-state trial I’ve been attending in Oakland, Meta moved to keep Arturo Bejar off the witness stand. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers refused, calling the motion a “Hail Mary” attempt to “eliminate a strong witness for the plaintiffs.” And man was he a strong witness.
Bejar was an early hire at Meta, interviewed and approved by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, and he worked there as a manager overseeing safety research and building child safety tools from 2009 to 2015. Even after leaving, he was still defending the company publicly as late as 2018 — going so far as to coordinate with Facebook’s PR team — and then his 14-year-old daughter got on Instagram. He says that within days she was propositioned sexually, judged for her body shape, and generally harassed. It inspired him in part to return to Meta as a consultant in 2019, working on the well-being team.
He left in 2021, the same fall Frances Haugen’s leaked documents landed at The Wall Street Journal and revealed how much the company knew about the harm being done on its products, particularly to young women. He testified before Congress in 2023. He has since testified in the two cases Meta lost, in New Mexico and Los Angeles, and spent four days on the stand in the ongoing trial against Meta in Tennessee.
The guy is just an excellent witness. He’s calm, he’s polite, he’s very smart, and most importantly he was deep, deep inside the company during what he describes as an enormous transition — from a place that worked actively to reduce harm to one that began to ignore it.
Every answer he gave today, he turned and spoke to the jurors, addressing everything to them. But it’s important to remember the jury is only an advisor to Judge Gonzalez Rogers. She determines the outcome here, and the punishment. So as you read this, imagine her listening to him, as well as the eight people in the box.
Here were my six big takeaways from his testimony yesterday and today, under direct and cross examination.
1. The “Move Fast” Culture
He spoke at length about the culture of the company, over repeated objections from Meta’s counsel that he shouldn’t be allowed to characterize it. (Judge Gonzalez Rogers — who it seems to me should probably be president — overruled them.) During his six-year stint, he said, it was still on the walls that they “move fast and break things.” It’s also a place where “data wins arguments,” and in his testimony he showed an awesome command of the quantitative and qualitative research he did while he was there.
Every team, he said, had North Star metrics to follow, usually centered on engagement, sessions, and time spent. But his well-being team uniquely lacked harm-based goals, he said. And decisions and priorities flow directly from Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s a quote that made me look up: “If Mark wakes up and says something is a priority, mountains move.” If Zuckerberg woke up one morning and decided that eradicating harm to kids was the company’s top priority, Bejar said, Meta would figure it out within three to six months. That didn’t happen, he says.
2. Optimized for Adult Revenue, Not Child Well-Being
Bejar took no issue with the idea that Meta should be able to turn a profit and support itself through advertising.
