Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta stifled internal research into the protection risks of its virtual reality apps – including a stomach-churning claim that sickos had “sexually propositioned” a child younger than 10, in accordance with bombshell whistleblower allegations that surfaced Monday.
Two of the whistleblowers, including a former Meta safety researcher named Jason Sattizahn and an unnamed colleague, detailed a shocking April 2023 research trip that they had taken to Germany.
In the course of the trip, a German mother said she didn’t allow her children to seek advice from strangers using Meta’s VR headsets – only to listen to her teenage son allege moments later that his little brother had been propositioned by creeps on multiple occasions.
“I felt this deep sadness watching the mother’s response,” Sattizahn, told the Washington Post. “Her face in real time displayed her realization that what she thought she knew of Meta’s technology was completely improper.”
After conducting the interviews, the researchers said they were told to delete their recordings and written evidence of the teenager’s allegations. As an alternative, Meta’s final report claimed German parents were merely concerned about the opportunity of groomers targeting kids in VR.
The scandalous allegations and others were brought by 4 current and former Meta employees who gave a trove containing hundreds of pages of documents, memos and presentations to Congress, the Washington Post reported.
Elsewhere, Meta was informed that children were skirting its age limits for using Oculus VR headsets way back to April 2017, in accordance with the leaked documents.
“We’ve got a toddler problem and it’s probably time to discuss it,” one worker message on the time said.
The worker, whose name was redacted, suggested that as much as 90 percent of metaverse users were underage.
The unnamed worker described one incident wherein “three young kids (6? 7?) were chatting with a much older man who was asking them where they lived.”
“That is the type of thing that eventually makes headlines — in a extremely bad way,” the worker wrote.
In a single November 2021 presentation cited within the Washington Post’s report, Meta attorneys told researchers in Reality Labs, the team liable for VR, to think about conducting “highly-sensitive research under attorney-client privilege” to stop it from surfacing in public.
Employees were also told to be “mindful” of the language they utilized in internal studies and specifically to avoid phrases like “not compliant” and “illegal.”
At one point in 2023, a Meta attorney allegedly told an organization researcher to not compile data on what number of underage kids were using the corporate’s VR devices “because of regulatory concerns,” the report said.
“To be crystal clear: Meta ordered its researchers to delete evidence that the corporate was breaking the law and willfully endangering minors,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project.
“That’s not only deeply disturbing, it’s cause for a deep investigation into Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership and the toxic culture inside Meta that encourages senior leaders to interrupt the law,” she added.
The Senate Judiciary committee will hold a hearing Tuesday that may examine the whistleblowers’ claims.
Last week, the panel’s chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley joined senators Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley in sending a letter accusing Zuckerberg of failing to adequately reply to its inquiries and demanding a follow-up no later than Sept. 16.
In a joint statement submitted to Congress in May, the whistleblowers alleged Meta’s attorneys had engaged in a scientific effort to screen and sometimes block the discharge of internal safety research.
The hassle was reportedly a response to the damaging 2021 leak of internal Facebook research by former worker Frances Haugen that showed the corporate knew its app, including Instagram, were harming teenage girls.
Haugen’s revelations triggered a wave of Congressional hearings.
The brand new whistleblowers allege Meta desired to “establish plausible deniability” in regards to the extent of its knowledge on safety risks.
Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever said the whistleblower claims that Meta had suppressed research that had been “stitched together to suit a predetermined and false narrative.”
“In point of fact for the reason that start of 2022, Meta has approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on social issues, including youth safety and well-being,” Lever said in a press release. “This research has contributed to significant product updates equivalent to latest supervision tools for folks to see who their teens are connected with in VR, how much time they spend, and the apps they access.”
“We’ve got also introduced automatic protections for teens to limit unwanted contact, like default voice channel settings in Horizon Worlds so individuals can hear or be heard only from people they know in addition to personal boundaries,” Lever added. “We stand by our research team’s excellent work and are dismayed by these mischaracterizations of the team’s efforts.”
Meta’s Lever didn’t confirm or deny whether the corporate had actually ordered details in regards to the Germany trip to be deleted from the ultimate report.
Lever said any such deletion would, if it occurred, would have been mandatory to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, a sweeping law that limits data collection.
“Global privacy regulations clarify that if information from minors under 13 years of age is collected without verifiable parental or guardian consent, it needs to be deleted,” Lever added in her statement.
Nevertheless, Sattizahn said the mother had indeed given her consent via a signed contract and that Meta normally wouldn’t require deletion of data collected in such research interviews.
Sattizahn said he was fired by Meta in April 2024 after clashing with management in regards to the company’s handling of safety research, while the opposite researcher who participated within the trip to Germany resigned in 2023 because of ethical concerns.
Two other whistleblowers are still working at Meta. All 4 are being backed by a nonprofit called Whistleblower Aid – which has also worked with Haugen, in accordance with the report.
“From the beginning, we built safety features into our devices and made it clear those devices were meant for people over 13—this was stated within the Oculus Safety Center, on the packaging, and within the user guides,” Lever’s statement added. “As more people began using these devices and Meta launched its own games and apps, we added many more protections, especially for young people.”
Zuckerberg was once all-in on the “metaverse,” even renaming his company from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect the corporate’s deal with the technology. Nevertheless, Meta has since pivoted most of its resources toward the pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta stifled internal research into the protection risks of its virtual reality apps – including a stomach-churning claim that sickos had “sexually propositioned” a child younger than 10, in accordance with bombshell whistleblower allegations that surfaced Monday.
Two of the whistleblowers, including a former Meta safety researcher named Jason Sattizahn and an unnamed colleague, detailed a shocking April 2023 research trip that they had taken to Germany.
In the course of the trip, a German mother said she didn’t allow her children to seek advice from strangers using Meta’s VR headsets – only to listen to her teenage son allege moments later that his little brother had been propositioned by creeps on multiple occasions.
“I felt this deep sadness watching the mother’s response,” Sattizahn, told the Washington Post. “Her face in real time displayed her realization that what she thought she knew of Meta’s technology was completely improper.”
After conducting the interviews, the researchers said they were told to delete their recordings and written evidence of the teenager’s allegations. As an alternative, Meta’s final report claimed German parents were merely concerned about the opportunity of groomers targeting kids in VR.
The scandalous allegations and others were brought by 4 current and former Meta employees who gave a trove containing hundreds of pages of documents, memos and presentations to Congress, the Washington Post reported.
Elsewhere, Meta was informed that children were skirting its age limits for using Oculus VR headsets way back to April 2017, in accordance with the leaked documents.
“We’ve got a toddler problem and it’s probably time to discuss it,” one worker message on the time said.
The worker, whose name was redacted, suggested that as much as 90 percent of metaverse users were underage.
The unnamed worker described one incident wherein “three young kids (6? 7?) were chatting with a much older man who was asking them where they lived.”
“That is the type of thing that eventually makes headlines — in a extremely bad way,” the worker wrote.
In a single November 2021 presentation cited within the Washington Post’s report, Meta attorneys told researchers in Reality Labs, the team liable for VR, to think about conducting “highly-sensitive research under attorney-client privilege” to stop it from surfacing in public.
Employees were also told to be “mindful” of the language they utilized in internal studies and specifically to avoid phrases like “not compliant” and “illegal.”
At one point in 2023, a Meta attorney allegedly told an organization researcher to not compile data on what number of underage kids were using the corporate’s VR devices “because of regulatory concerns,” the report said.
“To be crystal clear: Meta ordered its researchers to delete evidence that the corporate was breaking the law and willfully endangering minors,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project.
“That’s not only deeply disturbing, it’s cause for a deep investigation into Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership and the toxic culture inside Meta that encourages senior leaders to interrupt the law,” she added.
The Senate Judiciary committee will hold a hearing Tuesday that may examine the whistleblowers’ claims.
Last week, the panel’s chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley joined senators Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley in sending a letter accusing Zuckerberg of failing to adequately reply to its inquiries and demanding a follow-up no later than Sept. 16.
In a joint statement submitted to Congress in May, the whistleblowers alleged Meta’s attorneys had engaged in a scientific effort to screen and sometimes block the discharge of internal safety research.
The hassle was reportedly a response to the damaging 2021 leak of internal Facebook research by former worker Frances Haugen that showed the corporate knew its app, including Instagram, were harming teenage girls.
Haugen’s revelations triggered a wave of Congressional hearings.
The brand new whistleblowers allege Meta desired to “establish plausible deniability” in regards to the extent of its knowledge on safety risks.
Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever said the whistleblower claims that Meta had suppressed research that had been “stitched together to suit a predetermined and false narrative.”
“In point of fact for the reason that start of 2022, Meta has approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on social issues, including youth safety and well-being,” Lever said in a press release. “This research has contributed to significant product updates equivalent to latest supervision tools for folks to see who their teens are connected with in VR, how much time they spend, and the apps they access.”
“We’ve got also introduced automatic protections for teens to limit unwanted contact, like default voice channel settings in Horizon Worlds so individuals can hear or be heard only from people they know in addition to personal boundaries,” Lever added. “We stand by our research team’s excellent work and are dismayed by these mischaracterizations of the team’s efforts.”
Meta’s Lever didn’t confirm or deny whether the corporate had actually ordered details in regards to the Germany trip to be deleted from the ultimate report.
Lever said any such deletion would, if it occurred, would have been mandatory to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, a sweeping law that limits data collection.
“Global privacy regulations clarify that if information from minors under 13 years of age is collected without verifiable parental or guardian consent, it needs to be deleted,” Lever added in her statement.
Nevertheless, Sattizahn said the mother had indeed given her consent via a signed contract and that Meta normally wouldn’t require deletion of data collected in such research interviews.
Sattizahn said he was fired by Meta in April 2024 after clashing with management in regards to the company’s handling of safety research, while the opposite researcher who participated within the trip to Germany resigned in 2023 because of ethical concerns.
Two other whistleblowers are still working at Meta. All 4 are being backed by a nonprofit called Whistleblower Aid – which has also worked with Haugen, in accordance with the report.
“From the beginning, we built safety features into our devices and made it clear those devices were meant for people over 13—this was stated within the Oculus Safety Center, on the packaging, and within the user guides,” Lever’s statement added. “As more people began using these devices and Meta launched its own games and apps, we added many more protections, especially for young people.”
Zuckerberg was once all-in on the “metaverse,” even renaming his company from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect the corporate’s deal with the technology. Nevertheless, Meta has since pivoted most of its resources toward the pursuit of artificial intelligence.
