Blumenthal Delivers Opening Statement at Hearing with Meta Whistleblower

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, delivered opening remarks at a hearing with whistleblower Arturo Bejar, former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook:

“We are gathered today to hear testimony from a whistleblower, an engineer widely respected and admired in the industry, and not just any expert but an engineer hired specifically by Facebook to help protect against harms to children and make recommendations for making Facebook safer,” said Blumenthal in his introduction of Bejar. “We have known for more than a decade that rates of teens suffering from suicides, hospitalization for self-harm, and depression have skyrocketed. As he knows, these numbers are more than statistics, they are real people, and his daughter is one of them.”

“He resoundingly raised an alarm about statistics showing Facebook’s prevalent and pernicious harms to teens. Telling Mark Zuckerberg, for example in a memo, that more than half of Facebook users had bad or harmful experience just within the last week,” Blumenthal continued. “Instead of real reform, he will testify that Facebook engaged in a purposeful public strategy of distraction, denial, and deception. They hid from this Committee and all of Congress, evidence of the harms that they knew was credible. And, they ignored and disregarded recommendations for making the site safer, and they even rolled back some of the existing protections.”

Emphasizing the urgent need for Congressional action, Blumenthal said: “We can no longer rely on social media's mantra, ‘Trust us.’ We can no longer depend on its’ putting the blame or responsibility on parents. What is needed now is legislative reform. The Kids Online Safety Act. Senator Blackburn and I have enlisted more than 45 of our colleagues, almost half of the United States Senate, in favor of the Kids Online Safety Act.”

Video of Blumenthal’s opening remarks can be found here. The full transcript of Blumenthal’s opening statement is available below.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): This hearing of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Privacy, and the Law will come to order. Thank you everyone for attending. My thanks to Ranking Member Hawley and particularly the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin for giving us this opportunity. And, he is vitally interested in this topic and I will call on him after Senator Hawley for his remarks. We are gathered today to hear testimony from a whistleblower, an engineer widely respected and admired in the industry, and not just any expert but an engineer hired specifically by Facebook to help protect against harms to children and make recommendations for making Facebook safer.

We have known for more than a decade that rates of teens suffering from suicides, hospitalization for self-harm, and depression have skyrocketed. As he knows, these numbers are more than statistics, they are real people, and his daughter is one of them. Arturo Bejar is the former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care at Facebook, and he will tell us about the evidence he brought directly to the attention of the top management of Facebook and Meta; Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and others, in meetings and memos. He resoundingly raised an alarm about statistics showing Facebook’s prevalent and pernicious harms to teens. Telling Mark Zuckerberg, for example in a memo, that more than half of Facebook users had bad or harmful experience just within the last week. Instead of real reform, he will testify that Facebook engaged in a purposeful public strategy of distraction, denial, and deception. They hid from this Committee and all of Congress, evidence of the harms that they knew was credible. And, they ignored and disregarded recommendations for making the site safer, and they even rolled back some of the existing protections.

Now, Mr. Bejar is not the first or the only whistleblower to come forward. We heard from Frances Haugen, who showed that Facebook's own researchers described Instagram itself as a “perfect storm.” And that it, “exacerbates downward spirals of addiction, eating disorders, and depression.” Mr. Bejar is the first to show in documents, not just in his recollection, but in documents how he warned the top management of Facebook and Instagram of the ongoing harms their products were causing.

We are going to present those documents for the record, and they show, for example, that over a quarter of young teens, 13 to 15 years old report receiving sexual advances on Instagram. Nearly a third of young teens have seen discrimination based on gender, religion, race, and sexual orientation. A quarter of young teens report having been bullied or threatened, and nearly a quarter of young teens report experiencing feeling worse about themselves, about their bodies, and their social relationships. The type of experiences that lead to serious depression and eating disorders, and when users reported harmful content to Facebook, it took action only 2 percent of the time. Remedies only 2 percent of the time.

There’s a history here. In August of 2021, Senator Blackburn and I wrote to Facebook about the impact of their products on kids. We asked “has Facebook research ever found that its platforms and products can have a negative effect on children's and teens' mental health or well-being?” Facebook refused to answer. In October 2021 Senator Blackburn and I held a hearing. We heard from Frances Haugen about Instagram’s harms. And on that same day, Mr. Bejar sent an email to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Mosseri, and other executives validating Ms. Haugen's testimony. That email actually demonstrated even greater harms than were then public. A chilling and searing indictment of Instagram and Facebook, and I’m going to ask that it be made part of the record without objection. In December of 2021, Mr. Mosseri then testified to the Committee, to our Subcommittee, after he met with Mr. Bejar discussing these numbers and statistics relating to suicide. And during that hearing, a number of us asked him about Facebook promoting suicide. Mr. Mosseri knew, but he did not disclose, that on a weekly basis, around 7 percent of Facebook users overall encounter content promoting suicide and self-harm, with 13 to 15-year-olds seeing it more often than others. There is a pattern here with Facebook. It hides risk by saying things like “bullying and harassment is only .08 percent of content,” when in reality, Meta executives know that 11 percent of those 13 to 15-year-olds face bullying every single week—every single week on Instagram. And, just to be absolutely clear, that’s millions of children and teenagers. 

It is not just a number. Behind every one of those numbers is a real person, a teenager, a child, whose life is changed, maybe forever, by that searing experience of bullying, eating disorder content, suicide promotion. We can no longer rely on social media's mantra, “Trust us.” We can no longer depend on its’ putting the blame or responsibility on parents. What is needed now is legislative reform. The Kids Online Safety Act. Senator Blackburn and I have enlisted more than 45 of our colleagues, almost half of the United States Senate, in favor of the Kids Online Safety Act.

And, the final point I would make is, social media in particular, Facebook, still fails to take these threats seriously. This June, the Wall Street Journal found that Instagram was posting open markets for child-abuse material, even recommending pedophiles to each other. Young teens were being extorted and coerced into sexual acts. Instagram was complicit.

Mr. Bejar, you provided Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, and others in management with specific recommendations to prevent teens from experiencing this unwanted sexual contact and harassment. Those recommendations were never adopted. You have put your career on the line to come forward. An experienced and trusted industry expert, whose job was to make Facebook safer, and your recommendations were purposefully ignored or disregarded or rejected. I’m just going to remind my colleagues that we’ve heard from young people, as well as parents, about these harms, and one of them told me “how many more children have to die before Congress will do something?” That is why we are here today, and I want to thank all of my colleagues who are present. Truly a bipartisan group on behalf of this cause, and I turn to the Ranking Member, Senator Hawley.

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