Meta Whistleblowers Accuse Company of Suppressing Child Safety Research on Virtual Reality Headsets

Two former Meta researchers have come forward with allegations the tech company suppressed internal research on child safety and did not address findings showing their products were unsafe.

Meta whistleblowers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage made the allegations at a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law Tuesday afternoon.

Sattizahn has a doctorate in integrative neuroscience and worked for six years as a Meta researcher working to understand users and improve product safety.

“I am here today because it is evident that Meta consistently chooses profit over safety,” Sattizahn said as he chastised Meta for having “reckless disregard” for its users. He accused Meta of ignoring the problems its products created and “bury[ing] evidence of users’ negative experience.”

He acknowledged the scandals Meta faced during his time there from 2018 to 2024. In the face of public scrutiny, Sattizahn claims he saw Meta “deliberately compromising” internal processes and research to protect profits.

“During my first role at Meta, I led integrity research for Facebook Marketplace and the data was clear. Marketplace causes suffering for users including financial loss, stolen and counterfeit items, and personal safety issues ranging from being sexually propositioned by strangers to physical assaults and attempted kidnapping,” Sattizahn said.

He accused Meta of refusing to develop common-sense safety features because product teams prioritized user engagement over all else. He also claimed Facebook gave Congress false statements about its supposed inability to identify stolen items on Marketplace. The whistleblower told lawmakers he provided them with his own internal research that contradicts Meta’s public statements on stolen goods.

When Meta whistleblower and author Frances Haugen came forward in 2021 about Meta’s products creating mental-health issues for teenagers, Sattizahn said Meta instructed researchers to craft reports in certain ways to limit Meta’s risk exposure and prevent internal teams from sharing data. Nonetheless, Sattizahn recalled how Meta’s research continued to show dangers towards users.

When Sattizahn moved over to Meta’s virtual reality research division, he found that Meta’s leadership and lawyers controlled his research into the innovative technology.

“I soon learned that Meta had no interest in VR safety unless it could drive interaction and thus profit,” he asserted.

“When our research uncovered that underage children using Meta VR in Germany were subject to demands for sex acts, nude photos, and other acts that no child should ever be exposed to, Meta demanded that we erase any evidence of such dangers that we saw,” Sattizahn alleged.

He further described how his research uncovered psychological damage to children, especially girls, who were solicited, molested, and the subject of other inappropriate conduct in virtual reality. Meta allegedly told him to stop tracking emotional and psychological harms because of his findings.

Sattizahn thanked five current and former Meta employees, all researchers, who assisted with the whistleblower disclosures.

Savage gave similar testimony based on her time researching user experience for Meta. She has 12 years of experience and graduate-level education in experimental psychology. She worked for Meta from 2018 to 2023.

“In those four years, and most especially as I led research on youth safety and virtual reality, it became clear to me that Meta is uninterested and unwilling to listen to their users or prioritize their safety,” Savage said.

“While I speak about virtual reality, it is important to understand that the way Meta has approached safety for VR is emblematic of its negligent approach to safety for all of its products.”

She explained how Meta’s approach is to ignore child safety until it is forced to create insufficient and unused features to satisfy regulatory scrutiny. She said it is “not uncommon” for children to suffer from bullying, sexual assault, and solicitation from pedophiles on virtual reality.

“Meta is aware that its VR platform is full of underage children,” Savage stated. “Meta purposefully turns a blind eye to this knowledge despite it being obvious to anyone using their products.”

Meta would have to kick those users off their platforms to comply with child protection laws, but they do not because it would require the company to disclose lower active user numbers, Savage claimed.

She described how VR can heighten the impact of negative experiences because it is fully immersive, unlike other gaming or social-media platforms.

Children are regularly exposed to adult experiences like gambling and pornography on virtual reality, she recounted. Meta did not let her research the exact number of children with those experiences, Savage alleged.

She was the first, and for a time, the only researcher at Meta looking into child safety at VR. A legal representative at the company scrutinized her work and dictated the kinds of research she was allowed to do. The monitor was tasked with ensuring her research would not cause damage to Meta if publicly disclosed.

In one notable exchange, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) asked the whistleblowers if Meta wanted users under 13 to use their platforms. He presented a quote from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony last year and had the witnesses respond to it.

Sattizahn emphasized that Meta’s profits “would go through the floor” if Meta stopped allowing users under 13.

“Your testimony here today is in fact they’re rampant on the platform and Meta is specifically targeting them?” Hawley  subsequently asked.

“Yes, that’s correct,” Savage said.

Afterwards, Hawley accused Zuckerberg of deliberately misleading the American people based on the whistleblower testimony about users below the age of 13.

A Meta spokesperson told NR the whistleblower allegations were false and based on cherry-picked documents.

“The claims at the heart of this hearing are nonsense; they’re based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative,” the spokesperson said.

“The truth is there was never any blanket prohibition on conducting research with young people and, since the start of 2022, Meta approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on issues including youth safety and well-being.”

Meta created parent-managed accounts for 10 to 12-year-old users on its Quest virtual reality headset in 2023. With those accounts, parents decide whether to give their children access to Quest and allow them to enter age-appropriate virtual-reality worlds. Meta relies on users to submit their age information and created a reporting system in case someone detects an underage user.

Teenage accounts on Quest also have more default privacy settings and parental supervision tools. Meta created similar teen accounts on Instagram to give parents greater control over their children’s user experience and increase teen privacy.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), chairman of the subcommittee, led the hearing alongside ranking member Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), both of whom are critics of large tech corporations. Blackburn called for Congress to pass the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act to increase guardrails on social media in order to prevent “depraved” tech CEOs from exploiting children for profit.

“Meta continues to knowingly allow sexual exploitation and harms to children on their platforms. I’m incredibly grateful that individuals are still willing to come forward and shine a light on Meta’s disturbing, willful, and intentional actions,” Blackburn asserted at the beginning of the hearing.

“The metaverse has become the wild west for criminals who prey on our children,” she added. “Virtual reality can be incredibly dangerous for children, specifically because of the immersive nature of the technology.”

Klobuchar similarly thanked the whistleblowers and criticized tech companies for deploying algorithms that feed children harmful content online.

“For too long, these companies have worked to attract kids to their platforms. They do so knowing that their platforms use algorithms that increase the risk of sexual exploitation, push harmful content, facilitate bullying, and provide venues sadly for dealers to sell deadly drugs like fentanyl,” Klobuchar said.

“Sorry is not enough anymore. We need to put in some rules of the road to stop this from happening.”

Klobuchar referenced Haugen’s 2021 testimony about Meta’s awareness that its products caused psychological harm to its users, specifically in the development of eating disorders. Haugen turned over a trove of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and Securities and Exchange Commission before authoring a bestselling memoir.

Ahead of the hearing, the Washington Post published a bombshell story detailing the way adults use Meta’s virtual reality platforms to exploit children, who make up the lion’s share of users on virtual-reality platforms. Meta allegedly used the codename “project salsa” in an effort to lower the minimum age for its virtual-reality headsets from 13 to 10 because of the product’s popularity with kids. Klobuchar mentioned the Post’s reporting and described the issue of child exploitation by tech companies as a rare one where Democrats and Republicans can come together to tackle it.

Blackburn and Klobuchar each described the reasons why some Republicans and Democrats share a skeptical approach towards the tech giants. Social conservatives are worried about how the tech products can negatively impact childhood development and be used for criminality. Democrats are similarly wary of large corporations profiting off children and some of them believe tech companies hold too much power over their respective industries.