According to recent testimony during a U.S. Senate committee hearing, while social media giant Meta was focused on cracking down on conservative speech in coordination with the Biden administration, pedophiles were not only operating “vast” networks on the company’s platforms, but were often connected with each other via the company’s own algorithms.
During a November 7 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “social media and the teen mental health crisis,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) heard testimony from Facebook’s former Director of Engineering for Protect and Care, Arturo Bejar, about the apparent lack of effort Meta puts in to cracking down on the “vast pedophile network” that operates on its popular Facebook and Instagram platforms, while at the same time going to great lengths to censor conservative speech under direction from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, as evidenced by the Murthy v. Missouri (previously known as Missouri v. Biden) case.
Answering questions from Hawley, Bejar, who had previously stated that his own daughter had been a target of online sexual predators, confirmed to the committee that on October 5, 2021, he had sent an email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg that “one in eight children” on Facebook had received sexually inappropriate messages on the platform within the “last seven days,” and nearly one in three children had experienced similar “sexual advances” in general.
Despite the shocking nature of his findings, Bejar confirmed to Hawley that neither Zuckerberg nor Sandberg met with him to discuss his email, leading Hawley to characterize the Big Tech executives as “turning a blind eye” to information they did not find favorable to the company.
