A former Meta safety executive delivered bombshell testimony in a landmark New Mexico trial on the harms of social media on youth — alleging Instagram exposes teens to sexual predators and that company leadership resisted efforts to better protect children, the New York Post reports.

Arturo Béjar, who led a safety-focused team at Meta from 2009 to 2015 and returned as a consultant in 2019, testified that safety researchers were often stonewalled by top executives — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri — when pushing for stronger child-protection features.

He said Meta’s internal data painted a far more troubling picture than what the company publicly disclosed.

One internal survey known as the “Bad Experiences and Encounters Framework,” or BEEF, showed that at one point 16.3% of users reported seeing nudity or sexual activity on Instagram in a single week.

By contrast, Meta’s public Community Standards Enforcement Report (CSER) said only 0.02% to 0.03% of total views on Instagram contained nudity or sexual activity.

Béjar alleged the discrepancy obscured the true scale of harm occurring on the platform, calling Meta’s statistics “misleading.”

He also testified that Meta was woefully understaffed to handle safety violations and that its recommendation algorithms made it easier for predators to find potential victims.

“The product is very good at connecting people with interests,” Béjar told jurors. “And if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls.”

Daughter Targeted

Béjar said he returned to the company in 2019 after his then-14-year-old daughter was inundated with sexually explicit messages within days of creating her first Instagram account — including unsolicited explicit photos and propositions.

“I was with her when she created the account,” Béjar testified, appearing emotional at times. “I didn’t know that was going to bring predators to her door, people who would ask her to sell nude photos of herself when she was a teenager.”

He said Instagram lacked even basic reporting tools at the time. Users could block someone but could not indicate why.

“When my daughter got a message saying, ‘Do you want to have sex tonight?’ — first message she gets from a stranger — there was no option [to report],” he said.

According to Béjar, Meta shifted its focus during his second stint as it raced to compete with rivals like Snap and TikTok, leaving safety initiatives deprioritized.

Meta Pushes Back

A Meta spokesperson strongly disputed Béjar’s claims, saying it was “simply not true” that safety declined between his two stints.

“We’ve spent years doing research to better understand teens’ experiences on Instagram — both good and bad,” the spokesperson said. “We do this research to help us improve, and it’s informed many new features designed to provide safer, more positive experiences for teens.”

Those measures include Teen Accounts that automatically default minors into private settings with stricter messaging controls, parental supervision tools, and easier ways to block and report users.

Regarding its transparency reports, Meta said the CSER “outlines the content we don’t allow on the platform and has been informed by experts over many years. These policies need to be precise to help us enforce them accurately and consistently at scale.”

Broader Legal Battle

The New Mexico case is one of several legal challenges facing Meta. The company is also defending itself in a separate California trial alleging it fueled teen social media addiction.

During opening arguments, Meta’s attorneys emphasized that the company has taken significant steps to protect young users and is transparent with parents about potential risks.

On the eve of trial, Meta spokesman Andy Stone accused New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez of leading “an ethically compromised investigation into Meta that knowingly put real children at risk” after state investigators created test accounts to examine the platform’s safety systems.

Béjar’s testimony was set to continue Wednesday, followed by cross-examination from Meta’s legal team.