Former Meta employees allege company squashed research into VR child abuse
Content warning: this article contains mentions of child abuse and sexual violence.
Meta Quest developer Meta is facing high-profile accusations of allegedly ignoring and shutting down research into alleged child abuse on its virtual reality platform. According to NBC News and the Washington Post, two current and two former employees have testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee that the company suppressed internal research indicating children and teens were at risk of exposure to sexual harassment and abuse while using its VR products.
At the heart of the allegations is an interview with a German family where researcher Jason Sattizahn was told by a teenager that—despite his mother's wishes—he and his younger brother frequently encountered strangers while using Meta's virtual reality platform. The teen claimed that some of those strangers had sexually propositioned the younger sibling (it's not clear if this abuse took place in Meta's in-house game Horizon Worlds or another virtual reality title).
Sattizahn testified to the Senate that his supervisor ordered that the interview be deleted. Fellow researcher Cayce Savage also testified that she became aware that "it is not uncommon" for children using Meta VR devices to experience "bullying, sexual assault, to be solicited for nude photographs and sexual acts by pedophiles, and to be regularly exposed to mature content like gambling and violence, and to participate in adult experiences like strip clubs and watching pornography with strangers."
Savage said Meta did not allow her to investigate how many minors had been exposed to this material.
Meta says allegations of in-game child abuse are falseMeta spokesperson Andy Stone told NBC that the claims being investigated by the committee are "nonsense." "They're based on selectively-leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative," he stated, also denying that Meta issued a "blanket prohibition" on researching young users.
Stone had been referring to documents provided to the Committee and the Post, one of which contained a message from a Meta lawyer saying a user-experience researcher should avoid collecting data showing children were using Quest devices "due to regulatory concerns."
These documents also allege that Meta was aware that many minors were accessing its virtual worlds even while they were supposed to only be available to adults age 18 and over. Some showed messages from employees who witnessed older users asking children where they lived over in-game voice chat. Others indicated that lawyers working with user research teams offered guidance aimed at side skirting the question of whether minors were using Meta VR devices.
In one message from a company official contained in the documents, employees were reportedly told that they should "avoid saying 'kids' like we know for sure they are kids — instead use 'alleged Youth' or 'alleged minors with young-sounding voices who may be underage.'"
Meta does ask users to identify their age when creating accounts for any of its services—but according to internal research included in documents submitted to the Senate, when Meta asked users to verify their age, only 41 percent of users across all age groups gave the same date of birth as the one had previously submitted. A Meta spokesperson reminded the Post that it requires users to verify their age with an ID or credit card if it is worried they are lying about their age.
Game Developer has reached out to Meta for comment on this story.
