According to the whistleblower, many of the measures he had implemented during his first stint at Meta, such as tools designed to make it easier to report problems, had gone when he returned to the company as a consultant in 2019.
“When you hear from the inside from Arturo [Béjar] that it isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse, what other mechanism do we have to say to these companies that this is not good enough? The only mechanism I can see is regulation,” said Ian Russell of the Molly Rose Foundation, which is shepherding Béjar around meetings with U.K. policymakers, including the Science and Tech Secretary Michelle Donelan, Security Minister Tom Tugendhat and Labour’s Shadow Technology Minister Peter Kyle.
“It’s patently obvious that self-regulation has failed. Molly would still be alive today if the platforms had been better regulated,” said Russell, referring to his daughter Molly Russell, who took her own life after being exposed to a stream of self-harm content on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
Meta said it had introduced “more than 30 tools and resources to support teens and their families.”
Béjar, who lives in California, said he was in the U.K. because it is “the furthest ahead in the world when it comes to trying to put in a framework that protects kids.”
Britain’s “Children’s code,” a framework designed to protect kids online, is widely considered world leading and has inspired lawmakers as far away as California. Last year Britain followed jurisdictions including the EU by bringing in tough new online content rules, known as the Online Safety Act.
