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Meta covered up potential child harms, whistleblowers claim
Meta covered up potential child harms, whistleblowers claim
Two former Meta safety researchers told a US Senate committee on Tuesday that the social media giant covered up potential harms to children stemming from its virtual reality (VR) products.
"Meta has chosen to ignore the problems they created and bury evidence of users' negative experiences," said Jason Sattizahn.
The hearing comes a day after the Washington Post reported the whistleblowers' allegations that Meta lawyers intervened to shape internal research that could have flagged risks.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, denies the allegations and in a statement referred to the "claims at the heart" of the hearing as "nonsense."
Mr Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, who once lead research on the youth user experience for Meta's VR platforms, told senators that the company demanded researchers erase evidence of sexual abuse risk on those products.
They also alleged the company told in-house researchers to avoid work that could produce evidence of harm from its VR products to children.
Ahead of the hearing, Meta knocked back the allegations.
The claims, the company said, are "based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative."
There were also no bans or limits on carrying out research, a spokesperson added – saying the company has in recent years approved "nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on issues including youth safety and well-being."
Mr Sattizahn, who worked at the company from 2018 to 2024, responded in testimony to the committee by calling Meta's response to the Washington Post report a "lie by avoidance."
It's pointing out some rote number that means nothing," he said, insisting that Meta's research is being "pruned and manipulated.
During one exchange with US Senator John Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, Ms Savage alleged that during her research, she identified that Roblox, the online game platform popular among children, was being used by coordinated paedophile rings.
"They set up strip clubs and they pay children to strip" with Robux, the app's currency, which can be converted into real money, Ms Savage said.
"I flagged this to Meta and said that under no circumstances should we host the app Roblox on their headset," Ms Savage said. Roblox is still available in the Meta VR app store, she noted.
Roblox told the BBC it strongly disagreed with the allegations made on Tuesday, saying they were "based on ill-informed and outdated information".
At Roblox, safety is a top priority," a company spokesperson said. "We work tirelessly to remove violative content and bad actors from the platform through our 24/7 moderation system and respond swiftly to abuse reports, including banning accounts and reporting to law enforcement.
Meta offers parental supervision tools on its Quest headsets, as well as on the VR game, Horizon Worlds. These allow parents and guardians to see and adjust safety features and track which other players their children follow and are followed by.
But during the hearing, Republican Senator Ashley Moody of Florida said she was unable to navigate the parental controls despite being one of the first attorneys general in the country to sue Meta in court for allegedly harming children online.
"It doesn't surprise you that someone like me who has all this knowledge had to go to my own child and say 'how do I find the parental controls?'" she asked the former researchers.
"Not at all," they both responded.
Mr Sattizahn and Ms Savage are just the latest former Meta employees to come forward with explosive allegations about the company.
In 2021, Frances Haugen who once worked as a product manager on the company's civic integrity team, said Instagram was impacting the mental health of teenagers but did not share its own findings suggesting that the platform was a "toxic" place for many youngsters.
Ms Haugen had copied a trove of internal memos and documents prior to departing the company.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said that the time that her claims that Meta prioritizes profit above safety are "just not true".
Mr Zuckerberg has also faced repeated questioning by US lawmakers who claim that the company pushes harmful content to young users.
At a Senate hearing last year, after being prodding by Senator Hawley, Mr Zuckerberg apologised to families who claimed their loved ones had been harmed by the company's products.
Several of them were sitting in the audience behind him.
"I'm sorry for everything you have all been though," Mr Zuckerberg said.
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Source: BBC
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