The underage daughter of a former Meta safety researcher was bombarded with sexually explicit pictures and propositions within just days of creating her first Instagram account, according tobombshell testimony at a landmark New Mexico trial.

Arturo Béjar, who led a safety-focused team at Mark Zuckerberg’s company from 2009 to 2015, told jurors he decided to return as a consultant in 2019 after becoming alarmed at the sick messages his then-14-year-old daughter hadreceived on Instagram, including “unsolicited penis pictures.”

“I was with her when she created the account,” said Béjar, who appeared to choke up several times. “I didn’t know that was going to bring predators to her door, people who attacked her to her door, people who would ask her to sell nude photos of herself when she was a teenager to her door.”

Béjar, who has become an outspoken Meta critic since leaving the company for good in 2021, is a key witness for New Mexico state attorneys, who say the tech giant turned a blind eye as predators and sex creeps targeted kids in order to protect Meta’s profits.

His testimony was set to continue Wednesday, with another round of questions from state attorneys followed by cross-examination by Meta’s defense team.

The online safety expert said Meta changed significantly during his second stint at the company as it scrambled to keep pace with budding rivals like Snap and TikTok. Béjar testified that safety researchers were often stonewalled by top brass, including Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, when trying to implement new features meant to protect kids.

Béjar said, for example, that Instagram lacked a feature allowing users to report why they were blocking a particular individual — which meant that he and his daughter had little recourse when trying to alert the company about predators.

“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],” Béjar said.

He also alleged that Meta was woefully understaffed to address the volume of safety violations it faced. He laid the blame on its use of algorithms, which, he said, helped creeps find potential victims more easily.

“The product is very good at connecting people with interests, and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls,” he testified.

Source: Drudge Report