Whistleblower Aid clients – expert researchers with a combined experience of 20 years at Meta – break with Meta on youth harm in virtual reality
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 8, 2025 – Meta has repeatedly deleted or doctored internal safety research that shows kids, some of them 10 or younger, being exposed to child grooming, sexual harassment and violence in its Virtual Reality (VR), Marketplace, Dating and other products. That is according to the six company whistleblowers who have filed a detailed disclosure to Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
The whistleblowers, represented by Whistleblower Aid, say the company was so determined to maximize engagement with its VR users that researchers were told to stop asking questions about harm.
The whistleblowers say that Meta leadership has lied to their shareholders, to the public and to Congress when giving assurances about its commitment to child safety and are bringing their knowledge forward for investigation to determine whether the company has violated child safety regulations.
When one of the whistleblowers told a manager they felt uneasy about instructions to avoid research that would generate evidence of child harm in VR, they were told to “…swallow that ick.”
“Meta knew that underage children were using its products, but figured ‘hey, kids drive engagement’ and it was making them cash,” said Dr. Jason Sattizahn, one of the whistleblowers who has come forward. “Meta has compromised their internal teams to manipulate research and straight up erase data that they don’t like. It happens in a lot of their research, but the fact that they’re erasing data on child harm? It’s not just that Meta’s leadership is too distracted by stock prices to bother doing the right thing, it’s that they’ve created their own augmented reality where they can pretend things they don’t like don’t exist. Meta isn’t going to change unless they are forced to take responsibility for safety.”
Time and again efforts to implement safety work were denied – including an approved project to improve age verification in VR was abruptly ended after reaching Meta’s top leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg – only one in a number of instances across multiple products where our clients saw safety improvements not being implemented.
At the same time, Meta pushed forward with “Project Salsa” – an internal effort named for being “spicy”, or likely to draw regulator scrutiny. Salsa was an internal effort to lower the minimum age to use Meta’s VR platforms from 13 years old to just 10 years old. All the while, Meta knew that children under 13 were already using its platforms.
“Meta absolutely knows that kids under 13 were using its VR headsets – it was an open secret inside the company. It wasn’t the research that made them drop the ‘acceptable’ ages allowed in VR, it’s because Meta was scared,” Sattizahn said. “Meta was scared of the lawsuits that would come their way because kids of ‘unacceptable’ ages were users. So, Meta did what they always do. They ignored findings on underage kids on their platforms, just like they did when burying evidence about how ineffective their parental controls are.”
The whistleblowers also detail disturbing examples of sexual overtures directed at children in Meta’s VR, in one instance, a teenager shared that his sibling, under 10 years old, regularly experienced sexual advances from strangers in Meta VR. In a study conducted on unwanted interactions in VR, a young girl reported being solicited to “kiss” another user in VR.
“Meta’s greed permeates everything they do. Their answer to child harm is to circle the wagons – bury the evidence and double down on the lies. These brave whistleblowers show how Meta created a scheme to falsely claim deniability including see-no-evil policies and hiring third party vendors to be research enforcers.” said Libby Liu, Whistleblower Aid’s CEO. “Parents and lawmakers alike need to know the full extent of the danger Meta has knowingly exposed children to. What happens in virtual reality is reality. While Mark Zuckerberg brags about safety features that aren’t even effective or deployed correctly, Meta outright deletes and manipulates research that could protect children – choosing profit over safety and leaving kids vulnerable to horrific abuse in its VR.”
On September 9th, Dr. Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, Meta’s lead researcher on youth user experience for Meta’s VR products, will appear before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law as a witness in the hearing “Hidden Harms: Examining Whistleblower Allegations that Meta Buried Child Safety Research” testifying on his knowledge and experience of Meta’s reckless and willful neglect of safety research that would better protect kids across the company’s platforms.
“Instead of heeding serious concerns about widespread child harm on their platforms, Meta silenced employees who dared to come forward, buried egregious evidence, and shamelessly used innocent kids as pawns to line their pockets,” said U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn. “America’s children should not be forced to pay the tragic price when depraved tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg hand them over to groomers, pedophiles, and criminals to make an extra buck. These whistleblowers should be commended for having the courage to expose Meta’s disgusting web of lies, and their experiences underscore why it’s finally time to pass the Kids Online Safety Act.”
“The details in these disclosures are hard to stomach – because they reveal such major risks to kids’ safety, and because they are so painfully familiar. Yet again, Meta is revealed to be willfully misrepresenting abuses on its platforms,” said U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal. “Only this time, it appears that Meta took aggressive steps to censor, block, and even delete research and information about the toxic impact its platforms were having on young people in a disgusting attempt to avoid accountability. ‘Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil’ is simply not an acceptable business philosophy – especially when the lives of children are at risk. I look forward to discussing these brave whistleblower allegations at next week’s hearing, convened by Senator Blackburn, and to pushing forward with long overdue reform, starting with the Kids Online Safety Act.
