Arturo Bejar, a former safety engineer at Meta Platforms, has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the social media giant's recent settlement with a coalition of American states, arguing that the agreement does little to resolve the documented harms affecting teenage users that he outlined during legal proceedings. Speaking after Meta and the states announced their settlement deal, Bejar expressed scepticism that the accord would deliver genuine protections, characterising it instead as formalising what he called the company's "safety theatre"—measures that create an appearance of concern without addressing underlying problems.
During testimony before a judge and jury the previous week, Bejar detailed how Meta systematically minimised the scope of harm experienced by adolescents on its platforms. His account portrayed a company that knowingly downplayed how frequently teenagers suffered negative consequences, deliberately promoted content designed to trigger insecurity, and failed adequately to investigate and act upon reports of child exploitation. These allegations formed the backbone of the states' legal action against the technology company, which has faced mounting scrutiny over its impact on young people's wellbeing.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta hailed the settlement as transformative, declaring it would make social media demonstrably safer for children. Yet Bejar's post-announcement statement suggested the agreement falls substantially short of what evidence presented in court should have demanded. He noted that while teenagers might spend slightly less time on Instagram and Facebook as a result of the remedies, the underlying architecture and operational practices that generate harm would remain intact. His observation underscores a recurring tension in tech regulation: whether modified features constitute genuine reform or merely cosmetic adjustments.
The settlement requires Meta to transfer up to eighteen billion dollars to participating states over the coming decade while implementing various protective measures targeting teenage usage patterns. However, scrutiny of these remedies reveals that Meta previously considered and rejected several of them after internal analysis suggested they would have minimal effect on either user wellbeing or company finances. This pattern raises uncomfortable questions about whether remedies imposed through settlement represent genuine safety advances or simply the adoption of measures the company had already determined posed negligible risk to its commercial interests.
One illustrative example involves Meta's agreement to obscure the visibility of "likes" and reaction counts on posts, a step designed to reduce social comparison anxiety among young users. The company had explored this approach as early as 2019 under an initiative termed "Project Daisy." Internal testing yielded disappointing results for those seeking meaningful psychological benefit; Meta's own researchers reported finding no significant movements in overall wellbeing indicators following implementation. Equally telling, the company calculated that suppressing like counts would reduce daily active users by approximately 0.09 percent—a figure low enough that Meta permitted users to independently hide counts as an optional feature rather than making it mandatory.
The broader documentary evidence regarding Meta's internal knowledge of harms to teenagers has emerged through leaked materials and legal discovery processes over several years. Meta's own research teams documented how the company's algorithms systematically channeled fitness and beauty content toward adolescents already struggling with self-image concerns, deliberately engineering features to maximise engagement time beyond what users would naturally select. These discoveries contradicted Meta's public portrayal of its platforms as beneficial spaces where teenagers could connect and express themselves. Additionally, investigators found serious deficiencies in Meta's systems for responding to user complaints and moderating content depicting minors, with Bejar's own work revealing that actual harm rates substantially exceeded the company's publicly disclosed figures.
The settlement agreement, however, addresses these core allegations only peripherally. Instead of requiring Meta to fundamentally restructure algorithmic recommendation systems or substantially enhance content moderation capacity, the accord emphasises expanded parental supervision tools, daily time restrictions, and improved mechanisms for detecting adults impersonating minors. This emphasis reveals a regulatory philosophy that delegates responsibility toward gatekeeping rather than platform redesign. Yet the effectiveness of age-verification remains questionable; in Australia, where authorities implemented an outright ban on social media use by teenagers under sixteen, enforcement data shows that approximately eighty percent of affected young teens continue accessing platforms by misrepresenting their age.
Expert assessment of the settlement's practical value has proven divided. Dr. Jane Conron, a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, expressed reservations about Meta's obligation to provide a non-algorithmically curated feed to teenagers on a voluntary basis, predicting that few young users would opt into a fundamentally less personalised experience. She acknowledged, however, that the settlement's provisions capping daily usage hours could prove genuinely helpful for certain teenagers, particularly those whose parents struggle to enforce offline boundaries without institutional support. Some of her young patients, she noted, experience such acute emotional distress when their social media access is restricted that they become visibly distraught—a phenomenon suggesting that built-in usage limits might alleviate family tension around screen time management.
Conron also observed that the mere existence of a settlement addressing Meta's business practices might catalyse shifts in how society and families discuss social media's role in adolescent life. Even though the agreement stopped short of requiring Meta to acknowledge responsibility or admit to designing harmful products, she viewed the accord as symbolically significant. The settlement's visibility could heighten public awareness of documented risks, potentially prompting more informed conversations between parents and teenagers about platform use and its consequences. This representational dimension—the settlement as a signal about societal priorities regarding youth protection—may prove as consequential as any specific technical remedy embedded in the agreement.
For Malaysian readers and Southeast Asian observers, Meta's settlement carries broader implications about regulatory capacity and corporate accountability in the digital sphere. The agreement demonstrates how major technology companies can substantially shape the terms of their own regulation, securing settlements that codify relatively minor modifications while preserving core business models. As governments across Asia increasingly scrutinise social media's effects on youth mental health, the Meta case offers instructive lessons about the limits of negotiated settlements when enforcement mechanisms remain weak and the company retains significant discretion over implementation. The apparent gap between the harms documented in court and the remedies actually imposed suggests that meaningful protection for young users may require more aggressive regulatory intervention than settlement frameworks typically deliver.
