Meta Muzzled Child Safety Findings On Virtual Reality Platforms, Researchers Tell Congress

Senate committee held a hearing Tuesday on claims that Meta lawyers obscured research findings related to child safety on virtual reality (VR) platforms. The Washington Post reported that four whistleblowers submitted a “trove of documents” to Congress in May, who alleged in their statement that “Meta’s legal team was trying to establish plausible deniability.”

Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, both former Meta researchers, testified to sexual predation and harm faced by children using Meta’s VR products.

“I wish I could tell you the number of children in VR experiencing these harms, but Meta would not allow me to conduct this research,” Savage said. She noted personally observing these situations when using VR, and the stories of parents and teens that she was able to collect in other research. She later added she would “estimate that any child that is in a social space in VR will come in contact with or directly expose something very inappropriate.”

Savage and Sattizahn claimed throughout the hearing that Meta is fully aware that kids use their VR technology, but would go to great lengths to obscure that.

“Meta is aware that its VR platform is full of underage children. Meta purposely turns a blind eye to this knowledge despite it being obvious to anyone using their product,” Savage said. She acknowledged that because underage users on the platform are so common, the only way Mark Zuckerberg could be unaware is “if he had never used his own headset.” (Read more from “Meta Muzzled Child Safety Findings On Virtual Reality Platforms, Researchers Tell Congress” HERE)

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