Whistleblowers Say Meta Suppressed Internal VR Safety Research After Alleged Child Targeting

Whistleblowers who worked in Meta’s Reality Labs research unit say the company stifled internal studies into safety risks in its virtual reality apps, alleging investigators were ordered to remove evidence after finding that predators had targeted children. The disclosures, contained in thousands of pages of documents shared with Congress and reported by the Washington Post, include a claim that a child younger than 10 was “sexually propositioned” in Meta’s VR environment.

Two of the whistleblowers, including former Meta safety researcher Jason Sattizahn, described an April 2023 research trip to Germany in which interviews with parents produced what they called disturbing accounts of minors being contacted by adults in Horizon Worlds. According to the whistleblowers, company researchers were later instructed to delete recordings and written notes tied to those interviews; Meta’s final internal report, they say, characterized German parents’ concerns as hypothetical worries about potential groomers rather than accounts of actual incidents.

The whistleblowers provided documents, memos and presentations to Congress and news outlets that they say show a pattern of attorneys and senior staff screening or blocking the release of safety research. The records reportedly show awareness within Meta that children had been using Oculus headsets despite age limits dating back to at least April 2017. One internal message, with the sender’s name redacted in the documents, said the company had “a child problem” and estimated that as many as 90% of metaverse users could be underage.

Former employees cited a November 2021 presentation in which Meta attorneys reportedly advised researchers to consider conducting “highly-sensitive research under attorney-client privilege” and to avoid language such as “not compliant” and “illegal.” The guidance, the whistleblowers say, reflected an effort to limit the exposure of damaging internal findings after a 2021 leak by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen that revealed internal research on Instagram and other Facebook products. The new whistleblowers allege that a similar impulse to protect the company’s public narrative led to the suppression of VR safety research.

Meta, through spokeswoman Dani Lever, strongly disputed the characterization of its handling of safety studies and said the company had approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on social issues since early 2022. "This research has contributed to significant product updates such as new supervision tools for parents to see who their teens are connected with in VR, how much time they spend, and the apps they access," Lever said in a written statement. She also cited protections introduced for teens, including default voice-channel settings in Horizon Worlds that limit unwanted contact and personal boundary features.

Lever did not directly confirm or deny the whistleblowers’ specific allegation that company staff were ordered to delete material from the Germany trip. She said deletions, where they occurred, would have been done to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which limits the collection and retention of minors’ data without verifiable parental consent. Sattizahn responded that the German mother had signed a consent form and that the company normally would not require deletion of interview material collected in research settings.

The whistleblowers’ submissions say Meta was explicitly told by an internal attorney in 2023 not to compile a count of underage users of its VR devices "due to regulatory concerns." Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, called the allegations serious and said they merit investigation. "To be crystal clear: Meta ordered its researchers to delete evidence that the company was breaking the law and willfully endangering minors," Haworth said in a statement included in the documents.

The disclosures have prompted quick attention from lawmakers. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the whistleblower claims, and in a recent letter Sen. Chuck Grassley, joined by Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley, accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of failing to adequately respond to inquiries and demanded follow-up information by Sept. 16. All four whistleblowers are being supported by nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, which also assisted Haugen with her disclosures.

Two of the whistleblowers named in the materials remain employed at Meta, the documents say; Sattizahn said he was fired in April 2024 after disagreements over the company’s handling of safety research, and another researcher who took part in the April 2023 Germany interviews resigned in 2023 for ethical reasons.

Meta emphasized that its products were designed for users 13 and older and said the company has added protections "as more people started using these devices and Meta launched its own games and apps." The company has shifted much of its focus away from the metaverse in recent years and toward artificial intelligence, but the disclosures raise renewed scrutiny of VR platforms and the effectiveness of existing safety tools.

The Senate hearing is expected to examine whether Meta’s attorneys and executives suppressed or sanitized internal research and whether that conduct impeded regulators or the public from understanding safety risks to minors. Lawmakers have increasingly pressed technology companies on child safety and content moderation since high-profile disclosures about social media harms in recent years. The whistleblowers’ documents and the company’s responses will likely form the basis for questioning at the hearing and could prompt further oversight or regulatory action depending on what additional evidence surfaces.