He Called Zuckerberg a Liar Under Oath, On the Stand.

This week's Good Trouble honoree is Arturo Béjar.

Picture this.

You spend years inside one of the most powerful companies on Earth. You’re an engineer. You’re working on safety, the systems designed to protect people, including kids, from being exploited on the platform. You believe in the work. You give the company the benefit of the doubt.

Then you see them refuse to do right by it.

You bring the data to Mark Zuckerberg himself. Dozens of times. You sit across from him, show him what his platform is doing to children, and watch him take it in and do nothing.

Then on August 19th, you find yourself in a federal courtroom in Oakland. Forty-eight state attorneys general are in that room. The country is watching. You have one choice: tell what you know, or play it safe.

Arturo Béjar told what he knew.

He testified that the culture Zuckerberg has built at Meta makes it “practically impossible” to put proper child safety measures in place. Not difficult. Not a matter of funding. Practically impossible. And the only person with the power to change that, Zuckerberg… simply wouldn’t.

So he called him a liar. By name. Under oath.

I know what that moment costs.

I was in the Capitol on January 6th. I was there in my uniform, holding the line, watching officers around me take blows from people who had been told by the President of the United States that we were the enemy. I was called racial slurs by people I had been trained to protect. And when it was over, I had to decide whether to tell the truth in front of Congress knowing full well who I was up against and what they were capable of.

There’s a calculation that happens in that moment. You know the reach of the people you’re calling out. You know how long their memory is. You know the industry you work in, the relationships you’ve built, and what goes on the line when you walk into that room and speak.

Béjar knew all of it. He spent years working at Meta. He knew exactly how deep this negligence went.

He testified anyway.

I’ll be direct about why this matters beyond the courtroom.

Zuckerberg wasn’t on the dais at Trump’s inauguration by accident. He is not a tech executive who wandered into politics. He is power, the device in your pocket, your kid’s phone, the platform that reaches billions of people and he has shown time and again that engagement is worth more to him than what it does to the children on the other side of the screen.

That’s not my opinion. That’s the data Béjar held in his hands for eight years.

Meta eventually put $17 billion on the table to settle. Analysts will tell you that’s pocket change for a company that size. Forty-eight states put in years of work and the company wrote a check.

But you can’t unwrite testimony. A settlement ends a lawsuit. It doesn’t un-call a man a liar in open court when the charge is true and it’s on the record.

That’s what Béjar did.

There’s nothing performative about it. It wasn’t a press tour. It wasn’t a book deal. It was a man who had been inside the machine, who knew exactly what it would cost him, and who chose to tell the truth anyway.

That’s what we mean when we say good trouble.

Arturo Béjar — Standing Our Ground Good Trouble honoree, August 26, 2026.

You tried to make it work from the inside for eight years. When you couldn’t, you didn’t go quiet. You went before 48 attorneys general and every parent in America and you told them the truth.

We see what that took. Thank you for it.

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