Hi there --

A new Facebook whistleblower has come forward with shocking internal research from the company on Instagram's harms to kids. [1]

The Facebook whistleblower Arturo Bejar decided to share how Meta executives repeatedly ignored his team’s findings highlighting Instagram's serious harms to kids because two years later, the company continues to sweep the problem under the rug.

The statistics shared by Bejar, which asked teenagers to describe the experiences they had had on Instagram, are horrifying:

One in eight users under the age of 16 said they experienced unwanted sexual advances on the platform.
Among users under the age of 16, 26% recalled having a bad experience due to witnessing hostility against someone based on their race, religion, or identity.
More than a fifth felt worse about themselves after viewing others’ posts

Those numbers aren’t over months or even years on the platform – that was in just the past seven days.

This isn’t the first time Meta executives have ignored internal discoveries demonstrating the danger of their products in favor of maintaining profits. Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen previously testified on Capitol Hill two years ago, sharing thousands of internal documents detailing the profound societal harm caused by Facebook across the world.

Arturo Bejar's user-safety findings were sent to Mark Zuckerberg and other executives on the same day as Frances Haugen's first testimony before Congress. Yet, despite these revelations and public outrage, Meta has refused to take adequate action to make their platforms safe for kids.

As long as Big Tech prioritizes profit over the safety and well-being of our children, these disturbing trends will continue. But we won't back down. We are committed to holding Meta accountable and amplifying the stories of those who have been harmed by their deceitful business practices. We count on grassroots donors to provide us the foundation we need for successful campaigns that take on Meta:

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We cannot afford to wait for more reports of wrongdoing before we take action. Big Tech’s profit-driven product decisions have already come at too great a cost.

Thank you for standing with us in this critical fight. Together, we can make a difference and demand a safer, more accountable digital world for our children.

Thanks for being with us,

Nicole Gill
Co-founder and Executive Director
Accountable Tech

1. Wall Street Journal: His Job Was to Make Instagram Safe for Teens. His 14-Year-Old Showed Him What the App Was Really Like.

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