The Executive That Helped Build Meta’s Ad Machine Is Trying To Expose It

Brian Boland spent much than a decade figuring retired really to build a strategy that would make Meta money. On Thursday, he told a California assemblage it incentivized drafting much and much users, including teens, onto Facebook and Instagram — contempt nan risks.

Boland’s grounds came a time aft Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took nan guidelines successful a case complete whether Meta and YouTube are liable for allegedly harming a young woman’s intelligence health. Zuckerberg framed Meta’s ngo arsenic balancing information pinch free expression, not revenue. Boland’s domiciled was to antagonistic this by explaining really Meta makes money, and really that shaped its platforms’ design. Boland testified that Zuckerberg fostered a civilization that prioritized maturation and profit complete users’ wellbeing from nan apical down. He said he’s been described arsenic a whistleblower — a word Meta has broadly sought to limit for fearfulness it would prejudice nan jury, but which nan judge has mostly allowed. Over his 11 years astatine Meta, Boland said he went from having “deep unsighted faith” successful nan institution to coming to nan “firm belief that title and powerfulness and maturation were nan things that Mark Zuckerberg cared astir most.”

Boland past served arsenic Meta’s VP of partnerships earlier leaving successful 2020, moving to bring contented to nan level that it could monetize, and antecedently worked successful a assortment of advertizing roles opening successful 2009. He testified that Facebook’s infamous early motto of “move accelerated and break things” represented “a taste ethos astatine nan company.” He said nan thought down nan motto was generally, “don’t really deliberation astir what could spell incorrect pinch a product, but conscionable get it retired location and study and see.” At nan tallness of its prominence internally, labor would beryllium down astatine their desks to spot a portion of insubstantial that said, “what will you break today?” Boland testified.

Zuckerberg consistently made his priorities for nan institution abundantly clear, according to Boland. He’d denote them successful each hands meetings and time off nary protector of a uncertainty what nan institution should beryllium focused on, whether it was building its products to beryllium mobile-first, aliases getting up of nan competition. When Zuckerberg realized that then-Facebook had to get into style to compete pinch a rumored Google societal web competitor (which he didn’t name, but seemed to mention to Google+), Boland recalled a integer countdown timepiece successful nan agency that symbolized really overmuch clip they had near to execute their goals during what nan institution called a “lockdown.” During his clip astatine nan company, Boland testified, location was ne'er a lockdown astir personification safety, and Zuckerberg allegedly instilled successful engineers that “the priorities were connected winning maturation and engagement.”

Meta has many times denied that it tries to maximize users’ engagement connected its platforms complete safeguarding their wellbeing. In nan past weeks, some Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified that building platforms that users bask and consciousness bully connected is successful their semipermanent interest, and that’s what drives their decisions.

Boland disputes this. “My acquisition was that erstwhile location were opportunities to really effort to understand what nan products mightiness beryllium doing harmfully successful nan world, that those were not nan priority,” he testified. “Those were much of a problem than an opportunity to fix.”

When information issues came up done property reports aliases regulatory questions, Boland said, “the superior consequence was to fig retired really to negociate done nan property cycle, to what nan media was saying, arsenic opposed to saying, ‘let’s return a measurement backmost and really profoundly understand.” Though Boland said he told his advertising-focused squad that they should beryllium nan ones to observe “broken parts,” alternatively than those extracurricular nan company, he said that accuracy didn’t widen to nan remainder of nan company.

On nan guidelines nan time before, Zuckerberg pointed to documents astir 2019 showing disagreement among his labor pinch his decisions, saying they demonstrated a civilization that encourages a diverseness of opinion. Boland, however, testified that while that mightiness person been nan lawsuit earlier successful his tenure, it later became “a very closed down culture.”

Since nan assemblage tin only see decisions and products that Meta itself made, alternatively than contented it hosted from users, lead plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier besides had Boland picture really Meta’s algorithm works, and nan decisions that went into making and testing it. Algorithms person an “immense magnitude of power,” Boland said, and are “absolutely relentless” successful pursuing their programmed goals — successful galore cases astatine Meta, that was allegedly engagement. “There’s not a civilized algorithm, that’s not a thing,” Boland said. “Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t care.”

During his grounds connected Wednesday, Zuckerberg commented that Boland “developed immoderate beardown governmental opinions” toward nan extremity of his clip astatine nan company. (Neither Zuckerberg nor Boland offered specifics, but successful a 2025 blog post, Boland indicated he was deleting his Facebook relationship successful portion complete disagreements pinch really Meta handled events for illustration January 6th, penning that he believed “Facebook had contributed to spreading ‘Stop nan Steal’ propaganda and enabling this attempted coup.”) Lanier spent clip establishing that Boland was respected by peers, showing a CNBC article astir his departure that quoted a glowing connection from his then-boss, and a reference to an unnamed root who reportedly described Boland arsenic personification pinch a beardown civilized character.

On transverse examination, Meta lawyer Phyllis Jones clarified that Boland didn’t activity connected nan teams tasked pinch knowing younker information astatine nan company. Boland agreed that advertizing business models are not inherently bad, and neither are algorithms. He besides admitted that galore of his concerns progressive nan contented users were posting, which is not applicable to nan existent case.

During his nonstop examination, Lanier asked if Boland had ever expressed his concerns to Zuckerberg directly. Boland said he’d told nan CEO he’d seen concerning information showing “harmful outcomes” of nan company’s algorithms and suggested that they analyse further. He recalled Zuckerberg responding thing to nan effect of, “I dream there’s still things you’re proud of.” Soon after, he said, he quit.

Boland said he near upwards of $10 cardinal worthy of unvested Meta banal connected nan array erstwhile he departed, though he admitted he made much than that complete nan years. He said he still finds it “nerve-wracking” each clip he speaks retired astir nan company. “This is an incredibly powerful company,” he said.