Meta is facing new whistleblower allegations that it buried internal research on child safety problems with its virtual reality platforms, according to an extensive report by The Washington Post on Monday.
In one example cited by the Post, Meta researchers in Germany interviewed a mother who said she never let her sons interact with strangers on Meta's VR headsets. But her teenage son contradicted her, saying adults repeatedly propositioned his younger brother, who was under 10.
Researcher Jason Sattizahn told the Post he watched the mother realize "in real time" how unsafe the technology really was. He and another researcher say their boss ordered all records of the boy's comments deleted.
According to the Post, that erased testimony is part of thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by two current and two former employees. The whistleblowers allege Meta's lawyers intervened after earlier leaks in 2021 embarrassed the company. They claim the legal team screened and sometimes vetoed youth-safety research, seeking what they called "plausible deniability."
The Post reports that internal guidance from company lawyers urged staff to avoid collecting data on children in VR, warning of regulatory risk. Some employees cautioned that children under 13 were routinely bypassing age restrictions. Meta did not launch "tween" parental controls until the Federal Trade Commission began probing its compliance with child-protection laws.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, denied the accusations.
Spokeswoman Dani Lever told the Post that claims of buried research rely on "a few examples stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative." She said Meta has continued to study youth safety, consult parents, and build in safeguards such as blocking tools, parental supervision, and default privacy settings for teens.
Lever also argued that privacy laws sometimes require deletion of data involving minors, though Sattizahn told the Post the German mother had consented.
The Post notes that experts have long warned about predators in VR environments, where children can feel a sense of real-world embodiment. And lawmakers in Washington have increasingly raised alarms.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions pushing his vision of the "Metaverse," but documents obtained by Congress and reported by the Post suggest his company may have looked away from danger facing its youngest users.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee is set to review the whistleblowers' claims in a hearing on Tuesday.
Last week, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to Zuckerberg demanding information about allegations that Meta "allegedly allowed children under the age of 13 to register with adult accounts for the Horizon Worlds VR platform and failed to take appropriate measures to ensure compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)."
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