{"id":16735,"date":"2026-02-20T08:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/the-executive-that-helped-build-metas-ad-machine-is-trying-to-expose-it\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T08:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:05:08","slug":"the-executive-that-helped-build-metas-ad-machine-is-trying-to-expose-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/newstime\/the-executive-that-helped-build-metas-ad-machine-is-trying-to-expose-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The executive that helped build Meta\u2019s ad machine is trying to expose it"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Brian Boland spent more than a decade figuring out how to build a system that would make Meta money. On Thursday, he told a California jury it incentivized drawing more and more users, including teens, onto Facebook and Instagram \u2014 despite the risks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Boland\u2019s testimony came a day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a case<\/a> over whether Meta and YouTube are liable for allegedly harming a young woman\u2019s mental health. Zuckerberg framed Meta\u2019s mission as balancing safety with free expression, not revenue. Boland\u2019s role was to counter this by explaining how Meta makes money, and how that shaped its platforms\u2019 design. Boland testified that Zuckerberg fostered a culture that prioritized growth and profit over users\u2019 wellbeing from the top down. He said he\u2019s been described as a whistleblower \u2014 a term Meta has broadly sought to limit for fear it would prejudice the jury, but which the judge has generally allowed. Over his 11 years at Meta, Boland said he went from having \u201cdeep blind faith\u201d in the company to coming to the \u201cfirm belief that competition and power and growth were the things that Mark Zuckerberg cared about most.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Boland last served as Meta\u2019s VP of partnerships before leaving in 2020, working to bring content to the platform that it could monetize, and previously worked in a variety of advertising roles beginning in 2009. He testified that Facebook\u2019s infamous early slogan of \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d represented \u201ca cultural ethos at the company.\u201d He said the idea behind the motto was generally, \u201cdon\u2019t really think about what could go wrong with a product, but just get it out there and learn and see.\u201d At the height of its prominence internally, employees would sit down at their desks to see a piece of paper that said, \u201cwhat will you break today?\u201d Boland testified.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe priorities were on winning growth and engagement\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Zuckerberg consistently made his priorities for the company abundantly clear, according to Boland. He\u2019d announce them in all hands meetings and leave no shadow of a doubt what the company should be focused on, whether it was building its products to be mobile-first, or getting ahead of the competition. When Zuckerberg realized that then-Facebook had to get into shape to compete with a rumored Google social network competitor (which he didn\u2019t name, but seemed to refer to Google+), Boland recalled a digital countdown clock in the office that symbolized how much time they had left to achieve their goals during what the company called a \u201clockdown.\u201d During his time at the company, Boland testified, there was never a lockdown around user safety, and Zuckerberg allegedly instilled in engineers that \u201cthe priorities were on winning growth and engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meta has repeatedly denied that it tries to maximize users\u2019 engagement on its platforms over safeguarding their wellbeing. In the past weeks, both Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified that building platforms that users enjoy and feel good on is in their long-term interest, and that\u2019s what drives their decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Boland disputes this. \u201cMy experience was that when there were opportunities to really try to understand what the products might be doing harmfully in the world, that those were not the priority,\u201d he testified. \u201cThose were more of a problem than an opportunity to fix.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When safety issues came up through press reports or regulatory questions, Boland said, \u201cthe primary response was to figure out how to manage through the press cycle, to what the media was saying, as opposed to saying, \u2018let\u2019s take a step back and really deeply understand.\u201d Though Boland said he told his advertising-focused team that they should be the ones to discover \u201cbroken parts,\u201d rather than those outside the company, he said that philosophy didn\u2019t extend to the rest of the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the stand the day before, Zuckerberg pointed to documents around 2019 showing disagreement among his employees with his decisions, saying they demonstrated a culture that encourages a diversity of opinion. Boland, however, testified that while that might have been the case earlier in his tenure, it later became \u201ca very closed down culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s not a moral algorithm, that\u2019s not a thing \u2026 Doesn\u2019t eat, doesn\u2019t sleep, doesn\u2019t care\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Since the jury can only consider decisions and products that Meta itself made, rather than content it hosted from users, lead plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier also had Boland describe how Meta\u2019s algorithm works, and the decisions that went into making and testing it. Algorithms have an \u201cimmense amount of power,\u201d Boland said, and are \u201cabsolutely relentless\u201d in pursuing their programmed goals \u2014 in many cases at Meta, that was allegedly engagement. \u201cThere\u2019s not a moral algorithm, that\u2019s not a thing,\u201d Boland said. \u201cDoesn\u2019t eat, doesn\u2019t sleep, doesn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During his testimony on Wednesday, Zuckerberg commented that Boland \u201cdeveloped some strong political opinions\u201d toward the end of his time at the company. (Neither Zuckerberg nor Boland offered specifics, but in a 2025 blog post<\/a>, Boland indicated he was deleting his Facebook account in part over disagreements with how Meta handled events like January 6th, writing that he believed \u201cFacebook had contributed to spreading \u2018Stop the Steal\u2019 propaganda and enabling this attempted coup.\u201d) Lanier spent time establishing that Boland was respected by peers, showing a CNBC<\/em> article<\/a> about his departure that quoted a glowing statement from his then-boss, and a reference to an unnamed source who reportedly described Boland as someone with a strong moral character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On cross examination, Meta attorney Phyllis Jones clarified that Boland didn\u2019t work on the teams tasked with understanding youth safety at the company. Boland agreed that advertising business models are not inherently bad, and neither are algorithms. He also admitted that many of his concerns involved the content users were posting, which is not relevant to the current case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During his direct examination, Lanier asked if Boland had ever expressed his concerns to Zuckerberg directly. Boland said he\u2019d told the CEO he\u2019d seen concerning data showing \u201charmful outcomes\u201d of the company\u2019s algorithms and suggested that they investigate further. He recalled Zuckerberg responding something to the effect of, \u201cI hope there\u2019s still things you\u2019re proud of.\u201d Soon after, he said, he quit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Boland said he left upwards of $10 million worth of unvested Meta stock on the table when he departed, though he admitted he made more than that over the years. He said he still finds it \u201cnerve-wracking\u201d every time he speaks out about the company. \u201cThis is an incredibly powerful company,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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