    [Senate Hearing 119-255]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 119-255

                     HIDDEN HARMS: EXAMINING WHISTLEBLOWER
                             ALLEGATIONS THAT META
                          BURIED CHILD SAFETY RESEARCH

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY,
                            TECHNOLOGY, AND THE LAW

                                     OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION
                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 9, 2025
                                   __________

                               Serial No. J-119-37
                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

                  [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                            www.judiciary.senate.gov
                                www.govinfo.gov
                                     ______

                      U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    62-327                    WASHINGTON : 2026

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                      CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Chairman
    LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina    RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois,
    JOHN CORNYN, Texas                     Ranking Member
    MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah                 SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
    TED CRUZ, Texas                      AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
    JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri                CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
    THOM TILLIS, North Carolina          RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
    JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana              MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
    MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
    ERIC SCHMITT, Missouri               ALEX PADILLA, California
    KATIE BOYD BRITT, Alabama            PETER WELCH, Vermont
    ASHLEY MOODY, Florida                ADAM B. SCHIFF, California

                 Kolan Davis, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
             Joe Zogby, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director

                Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law

                       MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee, Chair
    LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina    AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota,
    JOHN CORNYN, Texas                     Ranking Member
    JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri                CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
    JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana              RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
    ASHLEY MOODY, Florida                ALEX PADILLA, California
                                         ADAM B. SCHIFF, California

                     Ben Blackmon, Republican Chief Counsel
                     Dan Goldberg, Democratic Chief Counsel

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page

    Blackburn, Hon. Marsha, Chair....................................     1
    Grassley, Hon. Charles E.........................................     5
    Klobuchar, Hon. Amy..............................................     3
    Blumenthal, Hon. Richard.........................................     6

                                   WITNESSES

    Sattizahn, Jason.................................................     8
        Prepared statement...........................................    37
        Responses to written questions...............................    50
    Savage, Cayce....................................................    10
        Prepared statement...........................................    44
        Responses to written questions...............................    68

                                    APPENDIX

    Items submitted for the record...................................    87

                                 HIDDEN HARMS:
                            EXAMINING WHISTLEBLOWER
                          ALLEGATIONS THAT META BURIED
                             CHILD SAFETY RESEARCH

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

                          United States Senate,
                  Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology,
                                           and the Law,
                                    Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subommittee met, pursuant to notice at 2:36 p.m., in
    Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Marsha
    Blackburn, Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Blackburn [presiding], Grassley, Hawley,
    Moody, Klobuchar, Durbin, Coons, Blumenthal, Padilla, and
    Schiff.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN,
               A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE

        Chair Blackburn. The Subcommittee will come to order.
    Senator Klobuchar is on her way, but I am going to go ahead and
    begin with my opening statement. As you all are aware, we have
    a vote series that is taking place, but I do want to say thank
    you so much for our witnesses being here, and for each of you
    being here today.
        We will hear from Dr. Jason Sattizahn and Ms. Cayce Savage.
    They are two brave whistleblowers who have come forward to
    detail shocking allegations about Meta's coverup of deeply
    disturbing child safety research. They were hired to
    purportedly make the platform safer for children, but what they
    found was a company that knew their products were unsafe and
    they just did not care.
        Nearly 4 years ago, I held my first hearing with a Meta
    whistleblower who detailed how Meta exploits our children
    online simply to maximize user engagement and boost their
    profits. Since then, we've seen a national movement of parents,
    legislators, whistleblowers, and children that have said enough
    is enough.
        Our children are more precious than the interest of
    depraved Big Tech CEOs, and that Congress must pass the
    bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act. After all these years, Meta
    continues to knowingly, knowingly, allow sexual exploitation
    and harms to children on their platforms. I'm incredibly
    grateful that individuals are still willing to come forward and
    shine a light on Meta's disturbing, willful, and intentional
    actions.
        Mark Zuckerberg has promised that, and I'm quoting him,
    ``In the Metaverse, you'll be able to do almost anything you
    can imagine.'' And for once, Mr. Zuckerberg's statement rings
    true. That is for predators, for pedophiles, for groomers, for
    traffickers, and all kinds of disgusting bad actors.
        As these whistleblowers will explain, the Metaverse has
    become the Wild West for criminals who prey on our children. As
    our witnesses will tell us today, virtual reality can be
    incredibly dangerous for children, specifically because of the
    immersive nature of the technology.
        Children have a much harder time processing the difference
    between violence and abuse in the physical and virtual spaces.
    In other words, when their avatar on Meta's virtual reality
    platform is raped or harassed, children experience that trauma
    as if it is actually happening to them.
        Let's be clear, virtual reality is reality. These harms are
    real, and this abuse happens every single day, every day on
    Meta's reality platforms. One employee stated on an internal
    message board in 2017, and again, I quote, ``We have a child
    problem, and it's probably time to talk about it.'' That was
    2017, one of their employees stating, ``We have a child
    problem.''
        But years later, Meta's C-Suite has zero interest in these
    findings. According to these whistleblowers, Meta executives
    decided they didn't want to see research detailing how harmful
    their products are to children, so they unleashed their attack
    dogs within Meta legal on the research teams intent on creating
    a rosy picture of their products, Meta legal, manipulated
    research methods, and buried negative data.
        Meta instructed researchers to avoid asking teen survey
    participants questions, which might lead them to discuss harms
    they've experienced because of Meta's design. And when their
    suppression didn't work, they just simply deleted the evidence.
    They erased it so no one would know.
        In one user review, Meta's Horizon Worlds was dubbed and I
    quote, ``The pedophile kingdom.'' This makes clear what we have
    known for years that Meta profits from the sexualization and
    abuse of children. If you need another example, look at the
    recent report that Meta's own internal guidelines allowed AI
    chat bots to engage in central conversations with children,
    their refusal to protect children and to instead profit at the
    expense of kids' safety. This is revolting. It is heinous
    conduct.
        Again, I want to thank the two whistleblowers that are here
    with us today, and the other whistleblowers who have come
    forward who are not here. I know that this was not an easy
    decision for either of you, but what you're doing brings us one
    step closer, one step closer, to holding these Big Tech
    platforms accountable.
        We have parents in the room today. Parents all across the
    Nation are speaking out, and we thank you. And to Maureen,
    Brian, Mia, Christine, those parents that have lost their
    children to social media harms, we are grateful that you're
    here, and grateful for your passion to make sure that no parent
    ever has to experience the trauma that you have experienced.
    With your help, we will get the Kids Online Safety Act passed,
    and we will get it to the President's desk, and we will hold
    Big Tech accountable.
        Now, I turn to Senator Klobuchar.

                OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
               A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

        Senator Klobuchar. Well, thank you very much, Chair
    Blackburn, and thank you for your long-time leadership of this
    as well as the very important bill that you and Senator
    Blumenthal have been proud to support it and be co-sponsor are
    pushing through and I've already passed the Senate once, so
    we're close.
        I have worked in this area for a long time myself, and I've
    known the frustration of no matter what you seem to do, you get
    lobbied against and millions of dollars against you. And I just
    think we're reaching a moment where the time is up, and there
    are too many families and too many parents that are affected by
    this. I want to thank our two whistleblowers that are here. I'm
    sure you never in your wildest dreams imagined that you were
    going to be in front of a Senate panel in this way. But I want
    to thank you for doing the right thing.
        For too long these companies have worked to attract kids to
    their platforms. They do so knowing that their platforms use
    algorithms that increase the risk of sexual exploitation, push
    harmful content, facilitate bullying, and provide venues,
    sadly, for dealers to sell deadly drugs like fentanyl.
        Meta cannot continue to turn a blind eye to these harms. It
    was in this very room with this very Committee--maybe it was in
    a different room, but the same Committee--where Mark Zuckerberg
    actually turned to some families who had lost children to drugs
    who said, ``I'm sorry, I'm sorry this happened.'' Well, sorry,
    is not enough anymore, and we need to put in some rules of the
    road to stop this from happening.
        This is not the first time whistleblowers from Meta have
    come forward. In 2021, another whistleblower, Frances Haugen,
    testified that Meta knew that its products took a significant
    psychological toll on users. In that case, it was eating
    disorders. That testimony should have been a wakeup call for
    Meta, a chance to right the ship.
        Meta did make changes after her testimony, but not to
    protect kids. Instead, the company took steps to establish
    plausible deniability. Meta blocked, manipulated, hid, and
    deleted research that showed that its virtual reality products
    were frequently used by underage kids who were exposed to real
    and significant harm.
        I want to underscore that the entire appeal of the
    Metaverse is that it's supposed to feel like real life and that
    can be fun. It's communication, it's entertainment. There's
    bells and whistles. But the problem is that the virtual reality
    platform, as it has been created, also allows adults to form
    relationships with unwitting children that can be exploited, as
    The Washington Post pointed out in their lengthy investigative
    piece yesterday.
        A 25-year-old man was convicted of kidnapping a 13-year-old
    after interacting with her through Meta's virtual reality
    products. Despite this, Meta forged ahead pushing new features
    to attract younger users and allowing younger and younger kids
    onto its virtual reality platforms without safety testing.
        One employee from Meta estimated that more than 80 percent
    of users were underage in one of the virtual rooms. Adult users
    frequently complained virtual reality spaces were overrun by
    children. I don't know what else you need to hear to know
    there's a problem--gleaning their presence by the sound of
    their voices.
        Yet, Meta, using the code name ``Project Salsa'' because
    allegedly they knew it would be a spicy topic, moved to lower
    the official age minimum for its virtual reality head sites
    from 13-to-10. In Meta's ongoing tradition of moving fast and
    breaking things, it broke its repeated promise to parents in
    Congress to protect kids on their platforms.
        That's why a bipartisan coalition of 42 State attorney
    generals, with wildly different political views on a number of
    things, decided to take this on. And that included my attorney
    general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison.
        But Meta has continued to prioritize user engagement. It
    does that because the more time people, no matter how young,
    spend on their platforms, the more money it makes. We know the
    profits on kids' data. According to a recent study, social
    media platforms generated $11 billion in revenue in 2022 from
    advertising directed at kids and teens, including nearly $2
    billion in ad profits derived from users age 12 and under.
        And while today's whistleblowers left the company before
    its current push to catch up in the generative AI space race,
    their testimony raises serious questions about whether Meta is
    ignoring child safety issues related to AI products, in
    especially in light of the recent reports that Meta allowed its
    chatbots to engage children into romantic or sensual
    conversations.
        That's why we must come together, Democrats, Republicans,
    to set up common-sense rules. We have worked on both the
    Judiciary and Commerce Committees to do this. Senator Cruz and
    I, basically through a lot of hard work over many years, passed
    our TAKE IT DOWN Act when the President signed it into law that
    would hold platforms accountable for taking down pornographic
    images of kids or adults that are either the actual images or
    AI created within 48 hours.
        We must pass Senator Blackburn and Blumenthal's Kids Online
    Safety Act to ensure that platforms design their products to
    prevent and mitigate harm to kids. We also know that other
    industries do not enjoy this similar level of protection. If
    they have an appliance that blows up or they have a tire that
    blows up on the road, there's accountability. They get sued and
    that's a major incentive to fix it.
        We don't have that with these social media platforms, and
    that is why I have long supported repealing Section 230, which
    was basically set up while these were little companies in the
    garage. That's not true anymore. They're the biggest companies
    the world has ever known.
        To end with this, one parent once told me that her trying
    to get her young kids, 6 and 8, off of these platforms, she'd
    have to resort to relying on her 12-year-old, 15-year-old to
    try to get it down. They couldn't figure out how to do it.
    They'd find another platform. It's just endless. Despite all
    her best efforts to be a mom, she said it was like a sink
    overflowing with a faucet she couldn't turn off and she was
    just sitting out there with a mop. These parents need more than
    mops. They need us to pass this bill.
        Thank you, Madam Chair.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Grassley, you're recognized.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. GRASSLEY,
                 A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF IOWA

        Chairman Grassley. And like Senator Klobuchar said, I want
    to compliment you on your leadership. Ever since you've been in
    the Senate, you've been fighting to protect children from
    social media abuse.
        During my time in the Senate, I've always fought for
    whistleblowers, both in the government as well as in the
    private sector. I've offered updates to the False Claims Act,
    the IRS Whistleblower Program, and other whistleblower laws.
    And just this year I've helped almost 20 government
    whistleblowers get their jobs back. Whistleblowers are key to
    rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. That includes the private
    sector, not just the government.
        On September 13, 2022, Ranking Member of the Judiciary
    Committee and I, along with Senator Durbin, held a hearing on
    these very issues. A Twitter whistleblower at that time
    testified disclosing to this Committee that Twitter potentially
    exposed user data to foreign intelligence agencies, including
    the government of China. His disclosures made public that the
    FBI notified Twitter of at least one Chinese Government agent
    at the company.
        This month, I, along with Senators Blackburn and Hawley,
    sent a letter to Meta about the company's use of targeted ads
    against teenagers. Our letter highlighted concerns that Meta's
    potentially violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection
    Act. It's been alleged that Meta collected personal information
    from children under 13 years of age without parental consent.
        My oversight has also shown that these tech companies look
    to silence whistleblowers. Last year I wrote to OpenAI about my
    concerns that they tried to silence whistleblowers, and I
    raised the same concerns this year with Meta. To address this,
    I've introduced bipartisan legislation to implement
    whistleblower protections in the artificial intelligence
    industry.
        Now, it's been alleged that another Meta whistleblower,
    Jason Sattizahn, has suffered retaliation. For example, in
    March 2023, he received a performance review stating he,
    ``Exceeds expectation.'' Then in October, 2023, he raised
    concerns to his leadership that Meta had been violating the
    Child Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. So, what did
    Meta do after spending 6 years at Meta with promotions and
    positive performance? They fired him 6 months after his
    disclosure.
        Ms. Savage also raised concerns about Meta's compliance
    with the law. Instead of addressing her concerns, Meta's
    lawyers reportedly told Ms. Savage to make sure that her work
    did not put the company ``at risk''.
        I often say that whistleblowers are treated like skunks at
    a picnic. It appears our witnesses as well as other
    whistleblowers who've approached me have unfortunately been
    treated like those skunks. Last year--we've been working on
    this for a long time, I should say, not just last year. So, I
    thank you, folks, for your courage and bravery in coming
    forward to Congress. I and my colleagues will continue our
    investigations.
        Chair Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator
    Blumenthal.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL,
              A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to
    begin by thanking you, Senator Blackburn, for holding this
    hearing, but even more important, for your extraordinarily
    dedicated, tireless, relentless work on the Kids Online Safety
    Act, which has been, for me, the opportunity of lifetime to
    champion.
        And I have come to know some of the bravest, strongest
    people who are with us today, parents of children who have been
    lost as a result of the toxic content driven by Big Tech at
    children purposefully and knowingly.
        And I want to thank the parents who are in attendance today
    as well as many, many others who couldn't be with us and say to
    you, we are going to continue to fight for the Kids Online
    Safety Act, and we will win this fight.
        The whistleblowers who are with us today are part of this
    battle. You are the truth tellers and you are part of a long
    line, I wish there were more, of people of conscience and
    conviction who have chosen to speak truth to power.
        And Senator Grassley is absolutely right that we need you
    because wrongdoing in government and in private industry is
    exposed as a result of people having the courage to come
    forward as you have done and you deserve more protection. I
    hope that Senator Grassley may join me in a bill that would
    provide more protection to whistleblowers.
        Four years ago, another whistleblower, Frances Haugen came
    forward to reveal how Meta knew it was fueling and aggravating
    a teenage health crisis, a mental health crisis that continues
    today even more widespread and exacerbated. Meta's own
    researchers described Instagram as a ``perfect storm'' that
    ``exacerbates downward spirals,'' of addiction, eating
    disorders and depression. They found that Instagram makes body
    image issues worse for one in three girls.
        Two years later, another whistleblower came forward, Arturo
    Bejar. He testified before this Committee that teens had
    dangerous, harmful experiences on Instagram at an alarming
    rate. And again, that Meta knew about it at the very top levels
    of leadership.
        We worked on a solution to this problem; the Kid's Online
    Safety Act. Meta promised it would work on solution, but it did
    the opposite. It worked to suppress research and tools to give
    parents better ways to protect their children. It purposely, in
    effect, obstructed and blocked critical fact finding that you
    both sought to do.
        I will never forget Mark Zuckerberg testifying before our
    Judiciary Committee and turning to the parents in the audience
    saying he apologized and Meta would do better. Not only did he
    betray that promise, he knew it was false when he made it
    because at that very moment, Meta was in fact suppressing
    research and fact finding.
        According to documents provided to our offices, Meta
    straight-jacketed its staff under a social issues protocol that
    restricts research on key types of harm, including suicide,
    eating disorders, bullying, and child trafficking by
    designating them ``sensitive''. Yes, they were sensitive
    because they would've undermined business and the reputation of
    the company. What that meant in practice is Meta installed
    monitors from their legal department who routinely altered,
    blocked, and shut down work on teen safety.
        In one research study, those monitors even demanded the
    destruction of data on underage children being solicited for
    sex acts. Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives wanted to
    make sure that government regulators, parents, and teens never
    heard anything more about the dangers of their products that
    are caused to young people.
        And as your disclosures show, they did so because Meta's
    attitude simply hasn't changed. It prioritizes profits over the
    well-being of children and teens. For example, Meta executives
    canceled proposals to more accurately identify children on its
    virtual reality platform and to provide them safeguards against
    abuse.
        These disclosures show why Meta has hired armies of lawyers
    and lobbyists, spent millions of dollars to kill the Kids
    Online Safety Act. It's dangerous for their business model,
    even if their practices are dangerous to kids. They don't want
    a duty of care. They don't want transparency. They don't want
    tools for parents. They want the Wild West, which continues
    now.
        And you know, Big Tech has been compared to Big Tobacco. I
    sued Big Tobacco as attorney general of the State of
    Connecticut. I led my fellow attorneys general ensuing Big
    Tobacco, and you know what gained us a victory, ultimately a
    settlement worth a lot of money, which is still coming to the
    states and a change in practices. The industry's own documents
    showed they were lying.
        The parallel is indisputable. We had whistleblower there.
    We have whistleblowers here who are speaking truth to power and
    revealing that this industry knows how its business model of
    driving toxic content to kids and even destroying lives is
    known to them.
        So, I take from your testimony that Meta has no shame, no
    conscience. It's waged an all-out war against Kids Online
    Safety. It spent millions to stop that bill in the House even
    though it passed overwhelmingly 91-to-3 in the Senate. The
    majority of American people, the vast majority, 91-to-3,
    bipartisan want this measure. We're here to demand it, and
    we're going to keep fighting until we get it done. Thank you,
    Madam Chair.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Durbin, do you have a statement?
        Senator Durbin. No.
        Chair Blackburn. We skip it. Okay. I will skip you for now.
        At this point, I want to introduce our witnesses. Dr. Jason
    Sattizahn is a researcher with over 15 years of academic social
    media and video game development experience. Most recently, he
    was a staff user experience researcher at Meta where he worked
    for over 6 years until 2024, leading research on Marketplace
    integrity, virtual reality, ranking algorithms, and emotional
    and physical harm to vulnerable populations.
        Prior to his role at Meta, he earned his PhD in integrative
    neuroscience from the University of Chicago, where he was also
    a graduate researcher before developing video games and
    accessibility features at Sony PlayStation.
        Ms. Cayce Savage is a user experience researcher with 12
    years of experience in academic virtual reality and social
    media research. After earning her master's degree in positive
    organizational psychology and program evaluation from Claremont
    Graduate University, Ms. Savage worked as a user experience
    researcher for a startup in T-Mobile before joining Meta in
    2019.
        During her 4 years at Meta, she worked on Facebook
    Marketplace, Facebook Jobs, Facebook Groups, and Virtual
    Reality. She specifically focused her research within reality
    labs on users under the age of 18, an immersive emotional,
    social, and physical harm to minors. She now serves as the lead
    user experience researcher for eBay Live. We welcome each of
    you.
        At this time, I would like for you to rise and raise your
    right hand.
        [Witnesses are sworn in.]
        Chair Blackburn. Thank you. You may be seated. Both
    witnesses answered in the affirmative. You each have 5 minutes
    for your opening. Dr. Sattizahn, you're recognized.

                   STATEMENT OF DR. JASON SATTIZAHN,
               FORMER META RESEARCHER, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

        Dr. Sattizahn. Chairman Blackburn, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar. Senator Grassley, Senator Durbin, Senator
    Blumenthal, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
    having me here.
        I'm here to discuss Meta's manipulation of research to
    cover up dangers facing billions across Meta's products and of
    particular concern the millions of children using Meta's
    virtual reality products. I also want to recognize and thank
    the five past and current Meta employees, all researchers like
    me, who have worked directly on creating Meta's products, who
    made the brave decision to be a part of this disclosure that
    brings us all here.
        My name's Jason Sattizahn. Growing up in the 1990's and in
    the middle of Missouri, I saw both the value and the problems
    that advances in technology brought the world. After a PhD in
    integrative neuroscience, I wanted to use my research
    experience to make these technologies and products better for
    the people that use them.
        Most recently, I spent 6 years as a researcher at Meta
    working in some of their most sensitive spaces and tasked with
    understanding users, their needs, and using this to try and
    make their products safer. I am here today because it is
    evident that Meta consistently chooses profit over safety. I'm
    not the first to discuss this as repeated whistleblowers have
    shared Meta's reckless disregard for users. However, in the
    wake of past whistleblowers, Meta has chosen to ignore the
    problems they created and bury evidence of users' negative
    experiences.
        I worked at Meta from 2018 to 2024. During these 6 years, I
    witnessed data scandals, multiple whistleblower disclosures
    about Meta's disregard for users and mounting public pressure
    for Meta to address these issues, I saw the company respond to
    these pressures by deliberately compromising internal
    processes, policies, and research to protect company profits
    over their users.
        During my first role at Meta, I led integrity research for
    Facebook Marketplace and the data was clear; Marketplace causes
    suffering for users including financial loss, stolen and
    counterfeit items and personal safety issues ranging from being
    sexually propositioned by strangers to physical assaults and
    attempted kidnapping.
        My time on Marketplace was my first exposure to help
    Facebook deprioritize safety for boosting user engagement.
    Simple safety investments such as not allowing people to
    message strangers with a single click were flatly rejected
    because product teams were afraid to do anything that could
    decrease engagement, the metric determining success and
    bonuses.
        It was around this time I also first saw Facebook make
    false statements to Congress, particularly about their
    inability to estimate stolen goods on Marketplace. Their
    statements directly contradict my own internal research, which
    I've submitted with this whistleblower disclosure.
        In the fall of 2021, Frances Haugen disclosed to Congress
    how Meta's products fuel mental health issues for teens,
    including body dysmorphia, and self-harm. Meta's immediate
    response for to congressional concern was not to do the right
    thing, but rather roll out new processes and policies to
    manipulate control and erase data.
        We, researchers, were directed how to write reports to
    limit risk to Meta internal work groups were locked down,
    making it nearly impossible to share data and coordinate
    between teams to keep users safe. Mark Zuckerberg disparaged
    whistleblowers claiming past disclosures were, ``used to
    construct a false narrative.''
        Despite Meta's attempts to prevent researchers from
    collecting necessary insights, the research we were able to do
    continued to show the dangers of Meta's products on users. This
    only highlights the sheer scale, severity, and prevalence of
    harm on these Meta products.
        In early 2022, I moved to Meta's Reality Labs to lead
    integrity research and help improve those using Meta's VR
    headsets. Virtual reality allows someone to wear a headset and
    experience an alternate reality to play games, watch movies,
    socialize with others. For Meta, VR is designed to push
    socialization above all as Meta saw this as a path to unbridled
    engagement and profit. The company invested billions,
    integrated social media like Instagram into headsets, and even
    rebranded as, ``Meta to align with the future of the company.''
        From my first days in Reality Labs, Meta leadership, and
    legal teams were in complete control of the research I was
    conducting. This was crucial research because this was a
    largely untested technology, but I soon learned that Meta had
    no interest in VR safety unless it could drive interaction and
    thus profit.
        After Meta VR sales were banned in Germany for 2 years over
    concerns about how Meta treats user data, in 2022, Germany
    allowed sales to resume. When I was asked to perform research
    in Germany, I understood that Meta was trying to show that
    their VR headsets were safe for German users.
        However, when our research uncovered that underage children
    using Meta VR in Germany were subject to demands for sex acts,
    nude photos, and other acts that no child should ever be
    exposed to, Meta demanded that we erase any evidence of such
    dangers that we saw.
        Despite Meta's attempts to hide these sensitive findings,
    my research still revealed emotional and psychological damage,
    particularly to women who were sexually solicited, molested, or
    worse. In response, Meta demanded I change my research in the
    future to not gather this data on emotional and psychological
    harm.
        When my colleagues' research showed the emotional impact of
    children being threatened by physical harm by strangers online,
    Meta not only restricted internal sharing, but manipulated
    reports to obscure any emotional damage during my time working.
        Chair Blackburn. Your time's expired, so let's wrap up.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Of course. If I had one thing to say, I
    would just want to make it very clear that Meta is incapable of
    change without being forced by Congress. Whether it's
    engagement or profits at any cost, they have frankly had
    unearned opportunities in order to correct their behavior and
    they have not.
        So, with that, I'll say thank you again for the opportunity
    to be with you all today, and for your commitment to stop the
    deliberate harm for millions of Americans. So, thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Sattizahn appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Blackburn. Well, thank you. Ms. Savage, you're
    recognized for 5 minutes.

                      STATEMENT OF CAYCE SAVAGE,
               FORMER META RESEARCHER, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

        Ms. Savage. Good afternoon, Subcommittee Chair Blackburn,
    Ranking Member Klobuchar, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Durbin,
    and Senator Padilla.
        I'm a user experience researcher. It is my job to listen to
    and advocate for users. I have a graduate degree in
    experimental psychology and 12 years of experience working as a
    researcher. I do this work because fundamentally I care about
    people.
        I worked at Meta from 2019 to 2023. In those 4 years, and
    most especially as I led research on youth safety and virtual
    reality, it became clear to me that Meta is uninterested and
    unwilling to listen to their users or prioritize their safety.
        While I speak about virtual reality, it is important to
    understand that the way Meta has approached safety for VR is
    emblematic of its negligent approach to safety for all of its
    products. The research is clear on what we must do to ensure
    that new technology is safe for children.
        Yet, across social media, messaging apps, and now wearable
    technology, Meta has failed to prioritize child safety until
    they are scrutinized by outside regulators. Then, they scramble
    to develop features they know are insufficient and largely
    unused, and advertise this as proof of their responsibility.
        Meta is aware that its VR platform is full of underage
    children. Meta purposely turns a blind eye to this knowledge,
    despite it being obvious to anyone using their products. If
    Meta were to acknowledge the presence of underage users, they
    would be required to kick off those users from their platform
    in order to remain COPPA compliant. This isn't happening
    because it would decrease the number of active users Meta is
    reporting to shareholders.
        At Meta, engagement is the priority above everything else.
    Because VR is immersive and embodied. Negative experiences
    cause greater psychological harm than similar experiences on an
    iPad or an Xbox. In VR, someone can stand behind your child and
    whisper in their ear and your child will feel their presence as
    though it is real.
        VR is tracking a user's real-life movements. So, assault in
    VR requires those movements to happen in real life. What
    happens in virtual reality is reality. Most importantly, Meta
    is aware that children are being harmed in VR.
        I quickly became aware that it is not uncommon for children
    in VR 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.
        I wish I could tell you the percentage of children in VR
    experiencing these harms, but Meta would not allow me to
    conduct this research. I personally saw these things happening
    in VR, consistently heard reports from teens and parents in
    research, and read countless accounts from concerned parents
    online.
        It's easy to learn that children are not safe using Meta's
    VR products just by reading public reviews like this one,
    ``Thanks, Meta, for making this the pedophile kingdom. They
    have made it so easy for us to meet and exchange information
    with children here.''
        Meta first acquired Oculus, its VR technology, in 2014. I
    was the first and for a time the only researcher dedicated to
    understanding whether its VR software experiences were safe for
    children. And I wasn't hired until 2022. So, for 8 years, as
    tens of millions of headsets were sold, Meta did not think
    about the safety of the children it relied on to achieve global
    market dominance.
        Throughout my time on Meta's VR Youth Team, child safety
    issues regularly went unresearched despite the frequency and
    severity of the harm. I was given a legal counterpart to
    scrutinize everything that I did, to tell me what research I
    could and could not conduct, and to ensure my research reports
    would not create risk to Meta should they be publicly
    disclosed.
        I was told not to investigate the kinds of harm children
    were experiencing in VR, and made to feel I was risking my job
    if I pressed the matter. Instead of amplifying the voices of
    our users, my work began being used to silence them so that
    Meta could claim deniability. I know a number of my colleagues
    were put in similar positions.
        Meta cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the safety
    or use of its products. Meta says it doesn't have a record of a
    large number of underage children using VR. This is because it
    has purposefully avoided gathering that data despite members of
    Meta's own leadership indicating that even they are unaware of
    or don't understand the importance of the minimum age of use.
    Despite this, research proposed to address this idea was not
    allowed.
        I deliberated for a long time about whether to come
    forward. Meta responded to Frances Haugen's disclosure in 2021
    by cracking down on research internally. Researchers across the
    company were subjected to sudden censorship, and were told it
    was for our own protection so we wouldn't be part of any future
    leaks.
        Candidly, I am worried that speaking to you today will put
    my former colleagues as well as the field of user research
    within Meta at risk. To my former colleagues who continue to
    advocate internally for child safety, I would like to express
    the greatest gratitude and admiration.
        Previous whistleblowers have come before this body to
    publicly testify to the suffering adults and children
    experience using Meta's products. Meta has promised it would
    change. I'm here to tell you today that Meta has changed, but
    for the worst. Meta has spent the time and money it could have
    spent making its products safer, shielding itself. Instead, all
    the while developing emerging technologies which pose even
    greater risk to children than Instagram.
        Meta consistently demonstrates that it cares more about the
    bottom line than the emotional or physical safety of the
    children who use its products every single day. How can Meta
    care for the safety of children when it doesn't acknowledge
    that they exist?
        Senators thank you again for your time and for your support
    regarding this matter.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Savage appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chair Blackburn. Thank you, Ms. Savage. We'll begin our
    questioning now, and Ms. Savage, let me start with you. You
    talk about Meta's refusal to acknowledge the harms, but I think
    many people who are watching this hearing today don't know what
    those harms would be. So, just very quickly, let's talk about
    if you were an 8-year-old girl and what you would experience in
    an unsafe situation in the Metaverse.
        Ms. Savage. Yes, thank you. I think it's important to start
    by describing briefly what it's like to use VR especially
    because a lot of parents haven't. So, you know, you're wearing
    a headset on your head, it's strapped to your face, and it
    completely obscures your vision and your hearing. So, you can
    no longer see the real world around you, which can also feel
    very vulnerable because you know, people can come up behind you
    in real life. And this means that some of the experiences in VR
    can feel heightened because you're already feeling vulnerable.
        VR is designed to be immersive and embodied. That's it's
    appeal. And so, when you experience things in VR, they feel
    meaningfully more real, psychologically, more real than if you
    were to experience that same thing on a television. You also
    have an avatar that you are embodying, and which research shows
    us you identify with. So, if something happens to your avatar,
    it feels like it's happening to you.
        It's also important to note that this is a social space.
    So, there are other users with bodies that can corner you, that
    can surround you, that can touch you. And folks can also speak
    to you.
        Chair Blackburn. And let me add in there users who are not
    known to you.
        Ms. Savage. Yes. That's a very good point. It's most common
    for you to be interacting with people you don't know in real
    life. And a lot of parents in my research indicated that they
    weren't aware that their children were interacting with
    strangers.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Just to be very explicit because it's not
    something that I think a lot of people have exposure with, when
    we talk about, you know, harms for children and for adults in
    VR, and we talk about things that are said, the audio that's
    transmitted isn't just solicitation or speech.
        There will also be instances that we have seen of where you
    can hear people sexually pleasuring themselves transmitted over
    audio in a spatial sense as you are being surrounded and being
    harassed. So, it's not just simple statements, it's actually
    the transmission of the motion and the audio of sex acts
    itself.
        Chair Blackburn. And so, that is what causes children to
    have the physiological and psychological response as if it were
    happening to them in the real world.
        Ms. Savage. Yes, exactly. Visually and auditorily. It feels
    real.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay, Dr. Sattizahn, I want to come to
    you. Senator Blumenthal and I wrote to Meta back in April,
    really sounding the alarm on some of their policies that with
    AI chatbots entering into sensual conversations with children
    and these policies went so far as to allow chatbots to tell a
    shirtless boy, and I'll quote this, ``Every inch of you is a
    masterpiece, a treasure I cherish deeply.'' So, you've been
    through this process at Meta dealing with them.
        Does it surprise you that they would allow their chatbots
    to engage in these conversations with children?
        Dr. Sattizahn. No, not at all. One thing that I'd like to
    just, you know, sort of caveat this is I never directly worked
    on the Meta AI chatbot team, but I did work directly on
    Facebook ranking. And to not get in the tech weeds with this
    Facebook ranking, ranking in general is sort of a sibling to
    artificial intelligence. It's actually something that's
    included with AI algorithms.
        And when I worked on the Facebook ranking team, I was
    working on how algorithms could be used to, you know, keep
    people safer. Whenever they see things that are shown to them
    in Marketplace, they see sexual content, we take it away, et
    cetera. Ranking is something that uses, generally speaking,
    more structured data that is easier to control for safety. And
    even when I was working on ranking, that was something that
    when I would try to work on the teams to improve safety, they
    were unable to do.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. Let me ask you this. Talking about
    algorithms, I know Meta has said TikTok is their main
    competitor. So, is Meta intentionally intensifying their
    algorithms in order to be able to compete more closely with
    TikTok?
        Dr. Sattizahn. It's so much sillier than that. When I
    attempted to look at things called coefficients or variables to
    make these algorithms safer, the engineers themselves told me
    that they didn't actually look at them. Because if the
    algorithm predicted it and engagement went up, then it must be
    good.
        So, to answer your original question, no, this doesn't
    surprise me at all because in the context of something like
    ranking, if they can't figure it out, I have no idea why they
    would ever be able to figure it out with an AI as well.
        Chair Blackburn. Got it. Senator Klobuchar, you're
    recognized.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank
    you for your testimony. Mr. Sattizahn, we talked about Frances
    Haugen. And her testimony in 2021, I asked whether the work of
    Meta's internal researchers, people like yourselves, is
    thorough and reliable. She said then that Meta had a top-ranked
    research program, and that its researchers were some of the
    biggest heroes inside the company in answer to my question,
    because they were willing to boldly ask real questions, which I
    truly appreciate. I believe that for many of them that was
    true.
        Could you tell me how did Meta's top-ranked research
    program, which you were a part of, change after she exposed
    that Meta's platforms frequently caused significant harm to
    young users? And be somewhat brief, but thank you.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Of course. So, from after 2021, after the,
    the Frances Haugen disclosure, there was essentially what I
    always refer to as a funnel manipulation put on research. What
    I mean by that is every stage of research before, during, and
    after its creation was locked down, monitored by either legal
    teams or management themselves.
        I'll be very brief to summarize this one my colleague
    brought up is legal surveillance. That's having a lawyer
    constantly look over things and possibly edit them. That is
    limiting the topics, the questions, the methods that you can
    use before you even collect data. It's the monitoring of
    research.
        So, you might have legal actually watching the data you
    collect and you are told to erase it proactively if they
    believe it is too sensitive. And it's even going as far to once
    reports are written, legal will go in and directly alter the
    findings themselves, or demand that you take them out before
    publishing them.
        Generally speaking, there was this increase after 2021 to
    also silo the research into sort of closed off areas. And so,
    my ability to go to my colleagues and talk about safety and
    say, ``Hey, here's some data that you need on Facebook
    Groups,'' et cetera, went away.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Let me just do some--that was very
    helpful--some quick yes or no questions because one of the
    things that I think really bothers these parents who've lost
    children, or have children who are just simply addicted to
    these platforms is that it appears and there's good proof that
    they are more interested, the company, in their bottom line
    than protecting these kids.
        Just yes or no, did Meta stop research projects into child
    safety, do you believe, because it didn't want to know the
    result.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. And did Meta restrict the information
    researchers could collect about child safety to preserve
    plausible deniability?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. And did Meta alter research designs to
    avoid collecting certain information?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. And did Meta modify research reports and
    results?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. And did Meta require researchers to
    delete data that showed harm to kids that was occurring on its
    platforms?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. I think that says it all. Thank
    you. Ms. Savage, while at Meta you proposed research to better
    understand the age of children using virtual reality. So, now,
    we're phasing into our current State, this project called
    Project Horton, right? Horton. Who it was named after Dr.
    Seuss.
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Because these kids are that young, was
    initially approved by Meta's chief technology officer and
    funded for more than $1 million. Is that right?
        Ms. Savage. That's correct.
        Senator Klobuchar. So, what happened to that research
    project?
        Ms. Savage. It was canceled with no explanation, which at
    Meta is very unusual.
        Senator Klobuchar. And given that the research was approved
    by the company's chief technology officer, who at Meta could
    have overruled that decision and shut the project down,
        Ms. Savage. To my knowledge, the only have the person is
    Mark Zuckerberg.
        Senator Klobuchar. Why do you think Meta's top leadership
    canceled the research?
        Ms. Savage. If Meta were to improve the quality of its
    ability to identify the true age of its users, it would be
    required to shut down such a large number of accounts that it
    would meaningfully drop their engagement metrics.
        Senator Klobuchar. How does turning a blind eye to the
    actual age of a young user in virtual reality put young users
    at risk?
        Ms. Savage. In so many ways. Part of development is that
    children are still developing the ability to distinguish
    between reality and fantasy. So, particularly for very young
    children that are in VR, things that happen may have more
    significant psychological effect.
        The research on this is still ongoing. So, we don't know
    the full extent of this. But of course, the most egregious harm
    that we're aware of currently is that VR is very social. And
    it's typical that that social interaction is happening between
    a child and a stranger. And avatars all look the same age. So,
    whether that other person's a child or an adult, we don't know.
        Senator Klobuchar. So, the Children's Online Privacy
    Protection Act requires parental consent for the collection of
    personal data of users under 13. Yet, we have heard testimony
    today that Meta new users under 13 were on its virtual reality
    platforms.
        Instead of addressing the issue, Meta, we believe,
    suppressed research that could have confirmed the presence of
    young users. How prevalent in your mind were users under the
    age of 13 on Meta's virtual reality platform and was Meta aware
    of the problem?
        Ms. Savage. It's such an issue that every single time I
    have used VR personally, the majority of individuals that I
    have observed or interacted with have been audibly under the
    age of 13. It is something that is the top complaint, to my
    knowledge, publicly for any other user that uses VR. It's
    something that our own, or Meta's own, you know, leadership
    would frequently post and be like, ``Hey, here's a video of my
    6-year-old.''
        Senator Klobuchar. And was Meta's leadership aware of the
    presence of kids under 13 then?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Did Meta take any steps to ensure it was
    not collecting data from these young users without parental
    consent?
        Ms. Savage. It didn't have the ability to identify which
    users were under 13, so it wouldn't have had that ability.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Last question, back to you and
    very briefly, Mr. Sattizahn. Last month, I sent a letter with
    Senator Britt, Schatz and seven other Senators to Meta raising
    significant concerns about its internal policies that allow its
    generative AI chatbots to have romantic or sensual
    conversations with kids.
        Given your experience, do you think Meta was aware of the
    potential harms to kids that could occur by letting its
    chatbots engage in such conversations with kids?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes. Meta has direct and global initiatives,
    for years now, to target youth across all of their products.
        Senator Klobuchar. Do you have any reason to believe that
    Meta is doing more to protect kids in its AI work than its
    virtual reality work?
        Dr. Sattizahn. To my knowledge, no.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Hawley.
        Senator Hawley. Ms. Savage, let me just pick up where
    Senator Klobuchar just left off. You said that in your
    experience, a majority of VR users are under the age of 13.
        Ms. Savage. That's correct.
        Senator Hawley. And that this is apparent to Meta
    leadership, you said?
        Ms. Savage. Yes. It's apparent to anyone who uses the
    product.
        Senator Hawley. Who in particular in Meta leadership.
        Ms. Savage. I'm curious if you remember any particular
    posts, but I know it's apparent to at least C-Suite.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct. There were legal directors, for
    instance, who would consistently monitor employees who would
    post underage videos of their own children using VR. So, this
    was directly visible to leadership who were posting these
    videos and having it removed internally.
        Senator Hawley. Mark Zuckerberg is aware of this, yes or
    no?
        Dr. Sattizahn. He would have to be.
        Senator Hawley. I bet it's a yes. Ms. Savage?
        Ms. Savage. The only way that he would not be aware is if
    he had never used his own headset.
        Senator Hawley. Well, that's extraordinary. And it's
    particularly extraordinary because let's take a look at
    actually Mark Zuckerberg's testimony. Mark Zuckerberg has
    testified before this Committee as recently as just last year,
    January 31, 2024. Let's put it up so we can see it. He says,
    this is Zuckerberg testifying, ``We don't allow people under
    the age of 13 on our service. So, if anyone who's under the age
    of 13, if we find them, we remove them from our service.''
        [Poster is displayed.]
        And then in response to another question, he says, ``We
    don't want users under the age of 13.'' We don't want users
    under the age of 13. Ms. Savage, is this true?
        Ms. Savage. That's an interesting quote. I mean, it would
    require the user to be honest about their age, in which case
    Meta would kick them off. But from research, even before Meta
    acquired the Oculus technology, we know that children are
    usually not using an account that accurately reflects their age
    for several reasons. The want part is interesting to me. I
    don't think their behavior matches that sentiment.
        Senator Hawley. Dr. Sattizahn, is it true that Meta does
    not want users under the age of 13 on the platform in any of
    their services?
        Dr. Sattizahn. I'd like to go back to the point that you
    made in response to this; that if they did, their value, their
    engagement, their profits would go through the floor. In this
    quote, if is doing a lot of work because they have taken no
    substantive efforts to make sure that their understanding that
    there are kids under 13. It's a lie by avoidance and Meta knows
    it.
        Senator Hawley. It's a lie by avoidance. So, in other
    words, Mark Zuckerberg, when he testified this last year, I
    want to emphasize, so isn't 10 years ago, this is barely 10
    months ago. This was just last year when Mark Zuckerberg says,
    we don't want people who are under age 13, they're not on our
    platform. And your testimony here today is, in fact, they're
    rampant on the platform, and Meta is specifically targeting
    them. Isn't that your testimony?
        Ms. Savage. Yes, that's correct.
        Senator Hawley. So, Mark Zuckerberg has once again,
    deliberately misled and lied to the American people. I mean,
    this is really, really extraordinary.
        Let me just make sure that I understand the full import of
    what you're testifying to. Dr. Sattizahn, if I could just come
    back to you. You have testified that Meta erases evidence of
    sexual abuse on its VR platform. Is that correct?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Senator Hawley. That Meta changes research to not gather
    data on emotional and sexual harm once it became aware that it
    was rampant. Is that correct?
        Dr. Sattizahn. That is correct.
        Senator Hawley. That Meta manipulates results of data to
    obscure any harm or other damage, shall we say, to users. Is
    that correct?
        Dr. Sattizahn. That's correct.
        Senator Hawley. Why do the research at all?
        Dr. Sattizahn. That's a great question. You have to do
    research. Actually, going back to my earlier point. The, the
    siloing of research helps explain this. When you put the most
    sensitive research into sort of bucket where no one else sees
    it, all of the other research that's done is phenomenal. And
    other researchers of the company are great at their job. They
    help make the product look better, play better, and experience
    better, but they're not thinking about safety or integrity
    because they're told not to.
        Senator Hawley. Well, my question is why do any research at
    all on harms? You've testified that you were doing research on
    harms, other people did research on harms, but Meta and its
    various entities, legal, et cetera, the C-Suite, would
    intervene and say, not that, change this, scrub that. Why do
    any of it to begin with then?
        Dr. Sattizahn. It comes down to the facts that some
    research is necessary to create a paper trail in order to show
    that you are doing it.
        Senator Hawley. Yes, exactly.
        Dr. Sattizahn. For instance, privacy work, you have to show
    that you are abiding by some sort of general data privacy,
    whether you're in one country or another, and you have to have
    that on record. But there are some things that are too
    sensitive to be done, et cetera,
        Senator Hawley. Isn't it precisely so that you can come
    before bodies like this one and go before the public and go
    before your shareholders and say, we're doing research on harm.
    We're doing gobs of research on harm. What they don't tell you
    is they're altering the research on harm.
        The whole point of doing it is so you can lie about it and
    create the impression that, in fact, as Zuckerberg testified to
    this Committee, oh, we're tracking it closely, when in fact,
    they're lying about it through their teeth. I mean, isn't that
    in fact what's going on?
        Dr. Sattizahn. If I may?
        Senator Hawley. Please.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yesterday Andy Stone spokesperson from Meta
    actually used this exact same excuse, a tweet about 12 hours
    ago, where his response to The Washington Post article, which
    is we predicted a year ago, was, we have done over 180 studies,
    including topics such as youth harm, et cetera.
        That response, again, is a lie by avoidance because it's
    pointing out some number that means nothing. The whole point of
    this testimony is that the research they're doing is being
    pruned and manipulated. Yet, now they're going before yourself,
    a government body, the public, and saying, ``But look, we did
    some research.''
        Senator Hawley. Why is having children under the age of 13,
    why is it so important to Meta? You both testified to this,
    your declarations testified to it. Why is it so important to
    Meta? Go ahead, Ms. Savage.
        Ms. Savage. Children drive product adoption in the
    household, and VR is a gaming device.
        Senator Hawley. So, they drive product adoption, which
    means what for Meta, just cash it out for us?
        Ms. Savage. That means the reason that families buy VR
    headsets is for kids.
        Senator Hawley. Which means more money for Meta.
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Hawley. So, this is about profits at the end of the
    day?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Hawley. Let's just be really clear. Meta's number
    one, bottom line is money. It is profits bar nothing. That's
    it. And what you're testifying to is they will do anything,
    anything, including exposing our children to the most vile
    sexual abuse if it means more profits for Meta. Have I got that
    right?
        Ms. Savage. Yes. If I may?
        Senator Hawley. Please.
        Ms. Savage. When I was doing research to identify the harms
    that children were facing in VR, which I had to be sneaky about
    because legal wouldn't actually let me do it, I identified that
    Roblox, the app in VR was being used by coordinated pedophile
    rings. They set up strip clubs and they pay children to strip,
    and that Robux can be converted into real money.
        So, and I flagged this to Meta. I said, under no
    circumstances should we host the app Roblox on their headset.
    You can now download it in their app store.
        Senator Hawley. I'm going to turn my this back over to the
    Chairwoman because my time has expired. I just want to end by
    saying this; it is abundantly clear to me that it is time to
    allow parents and victims to sue this company. They have got to
    be able to get into court, and to get in front of a jury, and
    hold this company accountable. And that begins with Mark
    Zuckerberg. There has to be accountability. We need to open the
    courtroom doors and allow victims to have their day in court.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
        Ms. Savage. Senator Padilla, you're recognized.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to
    the witnesses for being here. Mr. Sattizahn in your written
    testimony, you shared that in January 2023, you launched a
    survey of Meta virtual reality users, including minors and
    adults. That survey revealed that nearly half of Meta's VR
    users experienced harm, and 1 in 10 users experienced severe
    harm such as racism or sexual inappropriateness. These aren't
    isolated incidents. They reflect a systematic problem across
    the platform. Correct me if you disagree.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all.
        Senator Padilla. Okay. So, your survey also showed that
    Meta users, including minors, didn't know enough about the
    tools that exists intended to keep them safe. And yet, after
    your study revealed this, Meta denied multiple requests to
    invest in user education. Is that your understanding?
        Dr. Sattizahn. This is correct.
        Senator Padilla. Okay. Like I asked, not just as a Senator,
    but as a parent, to think that Meta would have resources
    available to better keep kids safe but not implement them is
    beyond troubling. Just as we don't allow car companies to sell
    vehicles without seat belts anymore, or drug companies to
    market medicines without clear safety labels medicines, VR
    system should be no different.
        So, my first question to you is; what resources would have
    been helpful? Who denied these requests and why?
        Dr. Sattizahn. The resourcing that would be helpful is
    staffing is money. You know, I mentioned in my disclosure over
    my 6 years at Meta, I was always in this exact space; integrity
    and safety. One constant over my 6 years was not having enough
    money to build for safety. Our engineering staff was always
    understaffed. Research staff was always understaffed. You might
    have noticed, but I was the only researcher for integrity
    across virtual reality software.
        That still gives me goosebumps when I think about it
    because I think I'm a good researcher. No researcher's good
    enough to cover that whole space by themselves. The thing that
    would've helped is taking the resourcing from chasing the next
    shiny object just to boost, you know, user engagement and given
    some of those resources that time, that money to our teams
    trying to build for safer products.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you. Now, I also recall a hearing
    that we had in the last Congress in this Committee when CEOs of
    the five social media companies, including Meta testified to.
    There was a full Committee, not the Subcommittee. And I recall
    asking each of them to share data with us about not just the
    tools available for minors and for parents, but what the
    adoption rates were for those tools.
        Surprise, surprise, they didn't share a whole ton of
    information, and what limited data we did receive suggested
    that the adoption rates were very low. So, as a followup
    question, in your testimony wrote through your survey research
    that virtually no one used parental supervision controls in
    Meta VR. Why are adoption rates so low, and what can be done,
    should be done to improve those adoption rates?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes, so both my colleague and I have worked
    in this space so long that we've known at Meta internally that
    these types of parental controls were not sufficient to keep
    individuals safe. I'd have to go back, and I'm happy to
    followup on this, I believe the earliest report that I saw was
    from 2018, an Instagram report showing that these types of
    parental controls that I believe Mr. Zuckerberg was referring
    to, in this case, were not sufficient for parents to keep
    children safe.
        And so, when we look into my research and we see somewhere
    between, I believe it was 2 to 10 percent of adoption rates, it
    didn't surprise me because not even the children who are
    experiencing VR in this case even see these things as valuable
    because from the onset, they weren't actually built to be
    valuable for those people using them. I don't know if you have
    anything to add because you also work in this space.
        Senator Padilla. Ms. Savage, please.
        Ms. Savage. If I may, I mean, certainly the parental
    supervision tools are not sufficient, in large part, because
    there's no parent education. And particularly, when we're
    talking about VR, we know that usually the kids are the ones
    using the headsets and the parents are not using VR, and it's
    fundamentally a different world.
        So, parents don't understand the risks that children face.
    They don't understand the ways that they should be supervising.
    And this is something that I flagged to Meta leadership that we
    needed to make a priority. And it has not been meaningfully
    actioned on, so.
        Senator Padilla. Okay. Well, I thank you both for your
    testimony, and may followup with questions for the record after
    the hearing today. Thank you.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Moody, you're recognized.
        Senator Moody. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us.
    It's heartbreaking that we have to have this hearing. I'm one
    of the newest U.S. Senators here in Washington, and when I was
    in Florida, I was the attorney general. And one of the hardest
    things for me as attorney general was balancing being a mother
    with a school-aged child and also being the attorney general on
    behalf of the State, protecting the all of the children in
    Florida.
        And as difficult as that was, of being the first mom on our
    cabinet of the school-aged child, I thought it brought to me a
    perspective and almost an urgency in focusing on some of these
    issues, whether that meant vaping going on in our elementary
    schools or predators getting to our children online.
        And I think what you're saying today is something that I
    have been trying to tell everyone. We really are the first
    generation of parents having to raise kids in this age of
    social media, and VR, and online platforms when Congress has
    done nothing to keep up with the evolution of technology. And
    they're basically saying, figure it out yourselves. It's the
    Wild, Wild West.
        And you are saying today that they knew not only that
    parents really didn't know how to use it, but they weren't
    using parental controls. Is that correct? Yes or no?
        Ms. Savage. That's correct.
        Dr. Sattizahn. That's correct.
        Senator Moody. So, I would consider myself pretty
    knowledgeable in this area, considering I was one of the first
    attorney generals to sue Meta in court for damaging and harming
    our children. And yet, it doesn't surprise you that someone
    like me who has all of this knowledge had to go to my own child
    and say, ``How do I find the parental controls?''
        Ms. Savage. Not at all.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all.
        Senator Moody. And you believe that Meta knew this?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Moody. One of the other things that is shocking,
    what I've tried to tell other parents, and they're finding this
    out slowly at surely because if their children haven't been
    harmed, their friends have been harmed. And we used to say, had
    of rules that we all knew as parents, don't go to that van,
    don't take that candy, don't do this, don't talk to that
    stranger. Stranger danger. Stranger danger now exists in our
    children's bedrooms. Is that correct?
        Ms. Savage. That's correct.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Senator Moody. And did you find in your research, and is
    there documentation at Meta, and do employees know that
    children under 13, or let's say children under 18, are being
    propositioned and harmed by predators?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes.
        Senator Moody. And you're saying that Meta knew this, and a
    way to deal with that is they brought in a team of lawyers to
    tell their researchers what language to use in reports so that
    it could qualify as attorney client privilege?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Senator Moody. So, if there was a warehouse, and someone
    knew that children were inside that warehouse being harmed by
    adults, do you think it would be sufficient to have a lawyer
    work with the people outside to make it conducive, or allow for
    or cover up what was happening to the children in the
    warehouse?
        Ms. Savage. Of course not.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all.
        Senator Moody. But because it's on an online space, we're
    expected to all just take it because they brought in a team of
    lawyers and taught them what language to use
        Ms. Savage. And they think parents don't know about the
    warehouse.
        Senator Moody. And I believe there was a report that said
    Meta proposed two ways that researchers could limit the risk of
    conducting sensitive research. One suggestion was to loop
    lawyers into their research, protecting their communications
    from ``adverse parties.'' And I'm using quotes there. I'm
    assuming the adverse parties mean parents and kids. Due to
    attorney-client privilege. Researchers could also write about
    their findings more vaguely avoiding terms like noncompliant or
    illegal. Is that correct?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Moody. Is that correct?
        Dr. Sattizahn. It is correct.
        Senator Moody. I've been a lawyer. I've been a judge. I
    don't know if attorney-client privilege covers lawyers that are
    complicit and help with facilitating an ongoing violation of
    law, especially when it relates to harming children. But yet,
    you as researchers, were instructed to use different language
    and include lawyers so that this could all be shielded.
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Dr. Sattizahn. May I add something to this?
        Senator Moody. Please.
        Dr. Sattizahn. We were also threatened by lawyers. I want
    to make that clear. It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't research
    guidance. Meta has already claimed that in The Washington Post.
    It wasn't legal being able to make the research better. We,
    both of us, had met with legal and they threatened our own jobs
    if we did not do this. One of the quotes they said was, ``You
    wouldn't want to have to testify publicly if this research was
    to get out, would you?'' And we're here. So, clearly, we didn't
    mind that.
        Senator Moody. Well, aside from ethical obligations of
    lawyers, I'm pretty sure attorney-client privilege doesn't
    cover the cooperation, and planning, and enabling of the
    continued violation of laws. And I appreciate you, Madam
    Chairman, for being here today and conducting this hearing.
        Chair Blackburn. Absolutely. And before I turn to Senator
    Coons. I want to followup on what you were saying. Here's the
    Oculus headset box. And we know that only 2 percent of parents
    use the parental controls. So, when I got this, I went through
    looking for where are the parental controls.
        I have two grandsons. I know that they enjoy this. And
    right here on the bottom of the box is one tiny QR code, one
    SKU right here, one code. And that is what a parent would have
    to go to after they put their glasses on [laughter] to try to
    find this thing, and then find that that is something that they
    can scan and then pull this up.
        I would just be curious; do we have any of the lobbyist for
    the social media platforms in the room today? I haven't seen
    anyone, I think. I think they probably don't have enough
    courage to come and face these parents that are here today. And
    again, we thank you. Senator Coons, you're recognized.
        Senator Coons. Thank you so much, Senator Blackburn,
    Senator Klobuchar, for convening this important hearing today,
    and to our two witnesses for your courage, your determination
    to make sure that the truth gets out, protecting our children
    from harm. It's the highest obligation all of us have.
        And it must have been so difficult for you to work for a
    company that in some ways does admirable things, delivers great
    services, but that as you serve there longer and longer, you
    began to realize was knowingly, and willingly, willfully
    blinding themselves to the harm that their products and
    services cause children. And then taking aggressive action to
    prevent you from studying or understanding the harm being
    caused to children, and then try to prevent you from
    communicating about that to anyone.
        So, here you are today testifying in front of the Senate
    Judiciary Committee to a bipartisan panel that includes
    seasoned prosecutors and seasoned Senators and parents and
    grandparents. And frankly, your testimony has been alarming,
    even jaw dropping.
        To summarize, Meta prioritized engagement over safety for
    billions. And when you tried to inform them of demonstrable
    harm and risk to children, they first turned a blind eye, and
    then tried to handcuff or blind you and others charged with
    research and promoting integrity. So, whether it's artificial
    intelligence or social media or virtual reality, we are in a
    very difficult period for parents.
        As Senator Blackburn just demonstrated, many of us lack the
    focus, skill, and ability to navigate the exact path toward
    parental controls on systems our kids are employing. And so, a
    very small percentage of parents are effectively protecting
    their children. They would expect that businesses that provide
    these services would test whether they're safe and would build
    them to be safe for children.
        Yet, your testimony proves otherwise. This ends up
    happening because there's a huge imbalance in power between Big
    Tech platforms who have all the data and all the power to
    understand the impact of their products, and engineer them to
    favor safety of the children and families, the policymakers,
    and the advocacy groups who have no way to get that insight.
        Addressing this imbalance of power is a fundamental and
    essential component of ensuring we're protecting our kids
    online. I want to talk briefly about three bills that I've
    introduced or am developing that are designed to help address
    this. The first, with Senator Cassidy, is the Platform
    Accountability and Transparency Act. It creates mechanisms for
    independent researchers to study what's happening on social
    media platforms, how their algorithms drive engagement over
    safety.
        Second, with Senator Grassley, a bill to protect
    whistleblowers, particularly in the space of artificial
    intelligence who come forward to disclose serious safety
    violations or vulnerabilities. And then last, a bill I'm
    developing to create similar mechanisms for independent
    research and transparency in artificial intelligence platforms.
        If we don't move forward bills like these and some of the
    bills my colleagues have championed, we are continuing to allow
    Big Tech to grade their own homework, to build their own
    platforms, and to continue to cruise forward toward
    profitability through engagement, blinded or uncaring about the
    harm to our children.
        So, Mr. Sattizahn, if I might, your testimony about all the
    ways that Meta buried or hindered internal research is just
    stunning. Given what you saw on the inside, could you just say
    a few words about the value and importance of ensuring there's
    mechanisms for independent researchers to actually study what's
    happening, whether it's in virtual reality, social media
    platforms, or AI?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes, thank you so much for going over those
    three different initiatives as well.
        Senator Coons. Thank you.
        Dr. Sattizahn. I'd say, you know, over the last 6 years, it
    was very clear to me that they will not change from the inside
    out. Meta will not change from the inside out. And during my
    long tenure there, the only things that actually led to
    professionalism or doing the right thing was Meta's fear of
    losing control; whether that was losing control over their own
    finances or losing control from some regulation or oversight
    coming in from the outside.
        So, all I have to say is, I love that phrase, they cannot
    grade their own homework because the only thing that will
    change the company is initiatives like that vying for
    independence, because as I've also testified, is if we rely on
    their own research, it will just be altered, changed, or even
    just erased. I don't know if you had anything to add.
        Senator Coons. Dr. Sattizahn and Ms. Savage, if you would,
    what's most important for us to get right in legislation that
    ensures access for independent researchers?
        Ms. Savage. I think, I mean, partially starting at
    collection, starting with the methods that are being used to
    gather the data the populations that we're looking at, et
    cetera, but also having access to the data before it's
    analyzed. That's very critical.
        Senator Coons. Ms. Savage, could you talk about the ways
    Meta specifically discouraged employees from coming forward as
    whistleblowers, and what more robust whistleblower protections
    might be important in order to ensure that, we, policymakers,
    the public, parents, know about the risks their kids are
    facing?
        Ms. Savage. Absolutely. I think the most powerful weapon
    that Meta had internally was narrative. After Frances Haugen's
    disclosure, Meta referred to the incident as a leak and
    frequently said, ``Oh, this this was so harmful to the
    researchers whose reports were shared. This has really been
    harmful for our ability to do good research and actually
    investigate harms to users.''
        In terms of actual whistleblower protections. I think part
    of it is the folks who are actually whistleblowing, but also
    the folks who remain at the company who do the investigation.
    I'm curious if you have anything to add there.
        Dr. Sattizahn. I think it was phenomenal.
        Senator Coons. And my sense is that, in closing, that good
    research is independent, unbiased, repeatable, and through
    legal action can lead to improvements in product safety. Thank
    you, Madam Chair.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Schiff, you're recognized.
        Senator Schiff. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you and
    Senator Klobuchar for organizing this hearing today. And thank
    you both for your courage in coming forward and speaking out. I
    can only imagine how difficult that has been, but so vitally
    necessary if there's ever going to be any change not just with
    respect to Meta, but with respect to the whole ecosystem.
        I wanted to ask you in some of your prepared remarks or
    things you said in the past, you identified information
    essentially that Meta's legal department or others willfully
    erased, removed. Can you tell us specifically what you're
    referring to there?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Sure. So, I would like to contextualize this
    with an example. I was running a survey, for instance, that I
    discussed a little bit in my disclosure where we found explicit
    information showing that women were being emotionally and
    psychologically harmed.
        After that survey was released, legal came to me, a legal
    team came to me and said this survey will not run in the future
    no matter what, unless you take those questions out. That would
    be something along the funnel that they are preventing any
    additional data from being collected around that topic.
        In other instances where I saw emotional or psychological
    harm as one example, and I had already written the report,
    legal actually opened the report with me and said, ``You have
    to take out these slides. You have to take out these lines.''
        And for context, in research, all data on the backend needs
    to be deleted in 90 days. So, if legal is going into a report
    and taking out lines or slides, they're effectively simply
    erasing the data anyway because it's our ethical duty as
    researchers to erase everyone's other private data before we
    analyze it as well.
        So, those are just a couple examples of things, ways that
    they would remove that information.
        Senator Schiff. And what kind of justification, if any, did
    they give you for deleting that data or instructing you not to
    ask those questions? How overt were they the about concerns
    that this would expand their exposure, or these were answers
    they didn't want to know, or they just wanted to purge the
    record of anything that didn't reflect well? I mean, what's the
    point of doing research if you're going to so bias the result?
    But what did they articulate as a justification?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Legal's repeated, explicit statements to me
    was that we did not want this data because it was too risky for
    us to have, because if there was an outside audit, it would be
    discovered that Meta knew about these harms. That was said to
    me dozens of times by my direct legal partners that I was
    forced to work with from Meta.
        Senator Schiff. And was there any pushback to that idea
    within Meta that is, were there others at Meta who were saying
    we're seeing real harms here and whether you minimize your
    legal exposure or not, the harms are taking place, something
    has to be done about this. Was there any kind of pushback like
    that?
        Dr. Sattizahn. There was. I know myself I went to both
    management and leadership over years with this, and it was
    entirely denigrated and pushed aside. Other researchers that I
    knew who shared similar concerns, either left the company, or
    were in direct fear of losing their role and decided to stop
    speaking up about it out of, you know, retaliation and losing
    their job.
        Senator Schiff. And the management that rejected these
    concerns out of hand, how did they reject them? What was their
    argument?
        Dr. Sattizahn. In one instance, my direct manager stated
    that she agreed with me and that I might very well be right,
    but that we needed to listen to legal anyway because that was
    the instruction.
        Senator Schiff. And did that kind of instruction, in your
    view, reflect the top leadership at the company essentially was
    legal following what they believed to be the culture of the
    very top leadership at Meta?
        Dr. Sattizahn. When this entire change after Haugen
    happened, leading to what we're discussing now, it went as high
    as Meta CTO, Andrew Bosworth, arguing with people one-on-one in
    comment sections about researchers speaking out about these
    problems. The CTO of the company was arguing with researchers
    like us who were speaking up saying that this lockdown on
    research was inappropriate.
        Senator Schiff. And do you have any sense from your
    colleagues who are or were within similar positions in other of
    the tech companies, whether what you were experiencing was an
    anomaly, or whether what you're experiencing is really the rule
    within the industry that is see no evil here, no evil don't
    have to address any evil or any ill result no matter how dire
    might be on young people?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes. After working at Sony PlayStation, at
    Meta, and working directly with individuals who worked at
    Google, et cetera, I can say that this is pure Meta.
        Senator Schiff. So, this is. So, you think this particular
    culture is unique to Meta?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct. Every tech company has issues with
    schedules and the fast pace leading to certain tradeoffs, but
    this culture of kowtowing to legal blindly, I have not heard of
    it anywhere else.
        Senator Schiff. Thank you, Madam Chair,
        Chair Blackburn. Thank you so much. I think there's
    interest in a second round of questions, and if you all don't
    mind, we will proceed to that.
        I want to stay right with this funnel of manipulation and
    look at that. I know that Frances Haugen had talked about the
    risk Meta became paranoid and then they talked about not the
    risk to kids and to people that were on their platform, but the
    risk to their bottom line. Is that accurate? Okay, y'all are
    nodding. Yes.
        Ms. Savage. That's correct.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. So, in order to get legal
    protection, so they couldn't be hauled into court, they went to
    third-party vendors, correct, and Dr. Sattizahn, you want to
    talk about that for a moment?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct. So, one part of this funnel of
    manipulation was that legal's consistent guidance across nearly
    every study I ran, and I know my colleague, Ms. Savage, ran as
    well, was that we were required to have third-party vendors
    collect data for us. Just for the record, third-party vendors
    are individuals who are not Meta employees, but are paid via
    contract to collect data for Meta.
        The explicit expressed reason that legal was telling us to
    have third-party vendors collect the data was so that the data
    could be erased if they found anything that was ``too
    sensitive''.
        Chair Blackburn. So, therefore, they would have some
    protection.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Chair Blackburn. And some distance and would not have that
    liability.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. Did you find it odd you worked at
    Play-Station, and PlayStation has recommended ages for
    PlayStation?
        Dr. Sattizahn. That's correct.
        Chair Blackburn. Movies have age recommendations and
    ratings. Video games, likewise. Did you find it odd that Oculus
    did not have an age rating, that they had escaped?
        Dr. Sattizahn. That I did. I found it very odd indeed.
        Chair Blackburn. Did you raise that with Meta?
        Dr. Sattizahn. I did, mainly through attempting to correct
    our age data so that we even knew what types of experiences
    would be exposed to different individuals.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. Ms. Savage, I want to talk with you
    about the content of the research that Meta was fearful of. And
    much of this we think you know is because they were looking for
    some way to escape liability.
        But the documents that I've reviewed, and I thank you all
    for submitting documents to us, I think have some really great
    insight into the pervasive abuse occurring on these VR
    products. And one example, Ms. Savage, that you gave us raised
    questions about how children were sidestepping age requirements
    and that Meta didn't care about that. So, talk to me about the
    research that you presented to Meta on that and how they pushed
    back.
        Ms. Savage. The first study that I did for the VR youth
    space was on parental supervision of VR, and that research very
    clearly showed that parents were most involved during the setup
    of the headset. And then after that, really it was just the
    child using it.
        So, firstly, we saw that parents were often making accounts
    under their own information on behalf of the child. Partially
    because they thought that that would give them supervisory
    access, but also partially because they didn't want Meta to
    have their child's data. So, of course, then the child is using
    an adult-aged account because Meta has not educated parents
    about the importance of children using appropriately aged
    accounts.
        But also, we saw that children are the ones who are driving
    headset buying in the household. Children are the ones using
    it. So, often, children are making their own accounts because
    they want access to restricted games. They want access to adult
    content and things like that. That's part of development.
    Children seek mature experiences and parents are often not
    aware that children are doing this because, again, Meta hasn't
    educated them.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. And let's talk briefly about the
    Germany case. I want to get that on the record, and you have
    talked about that when we visited. And I think that that
    incident really, there's a lot of that resistance that
    coalesces in this. So, outline the Germany case for us.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Yes. So, after when VR headsets were going
    back to being sold in Germany around, I believe, November 2022,
    we were asked as a team to research basically what the safety
    was like in Germany itself. Despite asking management and
    leadership, we were never actually explicitly told why we were
    doing research in Germany. And it was to my understanding that
    it was because they wanted a paper trail, a research study, to
    show that it was safe to do research in Germany to release
    again in Germany and have this headset sold to children.
        When we went to a German family's house to have an
    interview with his family, a young mother, one of her children
    we were interviewing about how they use these headsets and her
    son began discussing how another member of their family, an
    underaged, I believe he was around 8 or 9 years old, his
    younger brother was sexually propositioned, was asked for nude
    photos, had all sorts of sexual harm occur to him when he was
    using the headset privately.
        And the mother was horrified, in fact, actively even when
    Meta tried to, in real time, shut down the questioning by the
    moderator because they didn't like the data they were
    collecting, the mom kept asking for the son to talk about it.
    She was giving explicit consent in order to understand what is
    going on with my family in this case. Despite that fact,
    afterwards we were asked to delete all of our notes and
    recordings of it happening, and we did not discuss it again
    after that.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. Let me ask you this, and my time has
    expired, but has Meta been sued by the EU for any privacy
    violations? You can submit that so that I can get that on the
    record.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Klobuchar, you're recognized.
        Senator Klobuchar [off mic]. I think Senator Blumenthal.
        Chair Blackburn. Okay. Senator Blumenthal.
        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you. I apologize. We have another
    hearing going on, as frequently happens in this place, and
    votes, and so forth. So, I really am sorry that I haven't been
    here, and I especially apologize if I'm retreading some of what
    you've already talked about.
        But I think that the issue of shifting responsibility,
    offloading the burden of caring for kids as Meta has done, is
    especially important here. Because to the parents of America, I
    want to say, you are not alone here. You need help. And I say
    that as one who has received some help from my four children
    and still regard myself as learning about how to protect
    children. But what really offends me is that Meta knew that, as
    you have said, Ms. Savage, and I'm quoting, ``Parents were
    neither prepared to meaningful meaningfully use the VR parental
    controls, nor likely to use them often, and that the controls
    alone were insufficient to keep teens safe.''
        In all your disclosures, you indicate that Meta was all too
    happy to pass the responsibility for protecting their own
    children onto parents or other companies anyone but themselves.
    And I want to invite you to expand on that point that you've
    made, Ms. Savage.
        Ms. Savage. I appreciate it. I think the most egregious
    delineation of this is on the bottom of the box, it says, ``Not
    all children are ready for Meta VR.'' The implication there to
    me is, you know, if something goes wrong in VR, it is the
    child's fault because they're not mature enough to handle the
    experience.
        Part of the reason that parental supervision tools are not
    sufficient is because of the lack of education about what it
    means to be ready for VR, what it means to use VR but also the
    fact that VR is social and usually entails interacting with
    strangers and what that means parents are often shocked.
    Parents whose children use VR headsets are often shocked when I
    describe to them what the experience of using VR actually is,
    and what the experience of being sexually harassed in VR
    actually is like.
        Senator Blumenthal. And that is the reason why in our
    legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act, we impose a duty of
    care to provide parents with help, but impose a responsibility
    on Big Tech companies to provide that help, not just as a
    matter of their goodwill, but their responsibility when they
    know that there is a danger to children and to take action to
    help prevent that harm. What is your experience with age
    verification?
        Ms. Savage. Oh, yes. I proposed a research study called Age
    Assurance, which encompasses age prediction, stated age, and
    age verification. Because the quality of Meta's age data is
    very poor, as we can see, Meta claims, if we know that there's
    a 13-year-old kick off of the platform, and yet their platform
    remains full of children under 13.
        And so, clearly, I knew additional research was needed,
    particularly research because VR is a new kind of technology,
    which encompasses new ways of gathering data to understand
    someone's age. And that was the research that was mysteriously
    shut down.
        Part of verification, though, is the user needs to perceive
    some value, and they need to be willing to provide the company
    with information, either their birthday or their ID. And Meta
    has something that internally is called a ``brand tax'', which
    means that users don't trust Meta with their data and so are
    less willing to provide things like ID, and that's part of the
    reason why users often don't accurately represent their age.
        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you. And I want to just ask you,
    finally, have you heard from Meta's leadership or their
    executives about your testimony here today?
        Ms. Savage. Not directly.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all.
        Senator Blumenthal. When you say, ``Not directly''?
        Ms. Savage. They have--did respond to The Washington Post.
        Senator Blumenthal. In other words, you've read what their
    responses are in published sources, but they haven't contacted
    you directly.
        Ms. Savage. Correct.
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all, no.
        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you. Thanks, Madam Chair,
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Hawley.
        Senator Hawley. Ms. Savage, you testified earlier that a
    majority, in your view, a majority of Meta's VR users are under
    the age of 13. I'm just curious what percentage, if you had to
    guess, or maybe you know the exact number, maybe you do,
    Doctor, but what proportion of Meta's VR users, the children,
    the minors, are exposed to explicit content, sexual
    propositioning, sexual abuse of some kind on the VR platform?
        Ms. Savage. The prevalence of it is extremely high because
    it's very difficult to monitor that content in VR. It's
    difficult to monitor it on Instagram much less VR. So, I would
    estimate that any child that is in a social space in VR will
    come in contact with or directly expose something very
    inappropriate.
        Senator Hawley. I'm sorry, did you say any child?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Hawley. So, you mean every user?
        Ms. Savage. Yes.
        Senator Hawley. Every user will be exposed. Every minor,
    every child will be exposed to sexually explicit content of
    some sort. Is what you're saying?
        Ms. Savage. I see it every time I use the headset.
        Senator Hawley. That's remarkable. That's just remarkable.
    You also said, Ms. Savage, that negligence in VR platform is
    emblematic of negligence across Meta's platforms when it comes
    to child safety. Let me just ask you about chatbots. This has
    come up before. I'm sure that you're aware of the recent
    reporting that Meta allowed its AI chatbots to engage in
    explicit content, romantic and sensual, I think, conversations
    with children.
        Let's just take a look actually at what the internal
    document brought forward by a whistleblower said. It's right
    here in this middle portion. This is a Meta document. ``It is
    acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic
    or sensual.'' Let me say that again. ``It is acceptable to
    engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.
    It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence
    their attractiveness.''
        Again, this is Meta's own internal--these are their own
    internal guidelines. Does this surprise you at all?
        [Poster is displayed.]
        Ms. Savage. Unfortunately, no.
        Senator Hawley. Doctor, does this surprise you?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Not at all.
        Senator Hawley. When Meta says, as they have said,
    following the disclosure of these guidelines, that they will
    redouble their efforts to make sure that children are safe on
    their platforms, including with chatbots, does that give you
    any comfort? Do you think that we should take them at their
    word?
        Ms. Savage. Oh, no.
        Dr. Sattizahn. In no way, shape, or form. No.
        Senator Hawley. In no way, shape, or form. Let me just ask
    you one other thing. You've been with--you were with Meta. How
    long, Ms. Savage, approximately?
        Ms. Savage. Four years.
        Senator Hawley. Four years. Dr. Sattizahn, what about you?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Six years. And I do want to say for context,
    that's about longer than 90 percent of employees will ever work
    at the company because the turnover is so quickly. I believe it
    would've been about 80 for you.
        Ms. Savage. They calculate it for us on our profiles, so we
    know that that's correct.
        Senator Hawley. Wow. Four years and 6 years, respectively.
    As you look back on it, if you knew then what you know now,
    would you've gone to work for Meta, Ms. Savage?
        Ms. Savage. I think I knew that about the company going
    into it. I hoped to make it better.
        Senator Hawley. Doctor?
        Dr. Sattizahn. I would've, and I would've taken even better
    documentation.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Hawley. Let me just end with this. Do you think,
    based on what you know now in your time at the company, do you
    think that Meta is a force for good in this country and in the
    world?
        Ms. Savage. I don't see how they can be.
        Senator Hawley. Dr. Sattizahn?
        Dr. Sattizahn. No. It is aggressively ambivalent to people.
        Senator Hawley. Aggressively ambivalent to people. And yet,
    this is a company all about people, their attention, their
    interests, their data, their lives. This company has lost its
    way, profoundly lost its way, and they are harming our children
    as a result. Thank you, Madam Chair.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Oh, thank you very much, Senator
    Blackburn, and thank you, Senator Hawley, Senator Blumenthal,
    and I will remember forever the aggressively ambivalent, which
    I think is one of the many ways we can describe what's going on
    here.
        So, Mr. Sattizahn, Meta is the global leader in virtual
    reality and mixed reality devices, with reported 73 percent
    market share. When the dominant player, and I think this is
    key--as you may know, I do a lot of work on antitrust. And so,
    when the dominant player in virtual reality suppresses, alters,
    and deletes research into youth safety, how does that hinder
    the broader industry from implementing and improving safety
    standards for young users? Not that it would be good if anyone
    did it, but in my mind, it makes a difference. Could you
    explain your view of that?
        Dr. Sattizahn. There's no incentive for the company to
    change at this point. There were workings internally at the
    company, there were consistent discussions about this, that we
    were too big to fail in this space. My own data that I've
    shared with you all have, has shown the sheer number of
    individuals that are focused only on Oculus platforms for VR.
        And one of the thing that I do want to say that you would
    only understand if you work inside of these companies is that
    when you have a such a major player that is sucking up all
    engagement and commercialization of this thing, you end up
    taking a lot of the engineers and the people that build for it,
    that then have to abide by the rules, these unethical rules
    that they're forcing everyone to follow. And it creates this
    vacuum effect where then nothing can change.
        Senator Klobuchar. So, it's harder for the other companies
    to access that. And then, as well as they create almost this
    completely already to me unfair advantage, by being so big. And
    then, they also make it harder for the little ones to do it,
    because then they wouldn't even be competing on this. In this
    very sad playing field where a lot of the goal has been to
    bring in these kids to get more advertising research. Not the
    only goal by far, but one of the goals.
        Dr. Sattizahn. If I may. I also want to add that the advent
    of Meta's VR is so unique because the integration of billions
    of data points of content from social media has never existed.
    Meta is social first in VR, and so not only are they taking the
    entire gaming space, it's that now they're integrating
    Instagram content and Facebook content, which no other platform
    has. And it creates this system of virtual reality that it's
    not just gaming, it's everything, and no one understands the
    rules.
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes. Mr. Sattizahn, you provided
    research results to the Subcommittee that showed that 36
    percent of users reported unwanted sexual advances either every
    time or often in virtual reality. Is it true that Meta stopped
    tracking information about unwanted sexual advances rather than
    enact safeguards against sexual harassment?
        Dr. Sattizahn. It is true. And I also want to mention that
    they also obscured findings from study to study to limit that
    data being collected as well.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. And can you talk about the
    prevalence of sexual harassment on Meta's virtual reality
    platforms, and whether Meta did enough to stop it?
        Dr. Sattizahn. No. I would've to go back and look at
    statistics. I happily do a followup for this. To my memory, to
    my recollection, it was about 10 to 20 percent of individuals
    across the board were experiencing sexual molestation, groping
    solicitation, and it was significantly higher for women.
        This was something that I repeatedly went to management and
    leadership about, and I was repeatedly told that we were
    underfunded. We could not develop the sort of safety tools or
    even basic education so that people would know that this just
    might be something they'd see. Education itself is very
    powerful, because even if someone just knows that this is a
    possibility, you might have some sort of remediations or tools
    even insufficient in order to handle the problem.
        Senator Klobuchar. You want to add something, then I had a
    question for you, Ms. Savage.
        Ms. Savage. Oh, Meta is worth almost $2 trillion, are they
    not?
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes, that's right. So, Ms. Savage,
    Meta's virtual reality platform can be used, as we discussed in
    my opening, by child predators to mingle with kids online while
    concealing their age and identity. And the consequences can of
    course be devastating.
        In 2022, two separate kidnapping incidences were connected
    to the virtual products. Adult men convinced teenage girls in
    the unreal world to meet them in the real world where they were
    able to kidnap and move them across State lines. Luckily, both
    girls were found by police, returned home safely.
        Can you talk more about how seemingly innocent
    relationships fostered in virtual reality can lead to harms in
    the real world?
        Ms. Savage. That's a very good question. And my own
    research showed that while parents have rules about interacting
    with strangers for children, it takes only a few interactions
    before they consider someone a friend online. Trust is built
    very quickly. That's part of the development process.
        Senator Klobuchar. Right, especially with kids.
        Ms. Savage. Exactly. And so, particularly, when you don't
    know what someone looks like in real life, if they tell you
    they're your age, you'll likely believe them. So, it's very
    easy to build trust. And of course, there are playbooks that
    individuals who are groomers use for this.
        Senator Klobuchar. Right. Why is it uniquely challenging
    for parents in law enforcement to detect harm in virtual
    reality environments?
        Ms. Savage. Part of it is because there's no log of it, and
    the child is--they have something strapped to their face that
    you often can't see. So, parents, it may be happening in the
    living room and parents may not be able to see what's
    happening, but also because children consider, unfortunately,
    sexual solicitation and things like this to be pretty normal.
    And so, they may not tell their parents that this is happening.
    Also, part of development is that children are learning what is
    and is not. So, it may be happening and the child may think
    nothing is wrong.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. So, last question here. In
    addition to the bill that my colleagues have long worked on and
    got through the U.S. Senate on kids and the standard of care,
    and things that we need to do to update our laws.
        One other idea, of course, is to make changes to Section
    230 in every other business sector. Parents who believe a
    company contributed harm to their kids have a right to have
    their case heard in court. But social media companies argue
    that parents have no such rights because Section 230 immunizes
    them regardless of the content that they push to users, all
    while making billions in profits off of tracking and marketing
    tickets.
        I often think if we had put in place this ability decades
    ago, a decade ago, 5 years ago, we would never be where we are
    now with fentanyl being sold and pornography. And finally,
    we're starting to do something. But all that time passed, all
    those kids' lives were damaged or lost forever.
        And do you believe that victims--I'll ask each, I'll ask
    you first, Mr. Sattizahn--victims of harm that occur on Meta's
    platform should have the ability to sue Meta for its roles in
    these harms? And do you think Meta will change its behavior and
    take child safety online seriously without opening the
    courtroom doors to victims?
        Dr. Sattizahn. To your first question, I believe it is
    necessary. As I mentioned before, only outside regulation and
    financial punishment is something that will actually create
    change inside the company. So, to answer your question, that
    would essentially be necessary for the company to learn or at
    least change its behavior in the future.
        Senator Klobuchar. Ms. Savage.
        Ms. Savage. I agree. And I would also say harm that happens
    online is harm. Full stop. And so, parents should be able to
    respond accordingly.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Thank you.
        Chair Blackburn. Senator Blumenthal.
        Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Chair. I know we've been at
    this for a while. I just have a few questions to conclude. You
    know, I asked you before whether Meta had contacted you
    directly, you said not, but you have read their responses in
    The Washington Post.
        And I'll just put it bluntly. In effect, they're calling
    you liars. They say that, ``Your testimony is based on a few
    examples stitched together to fit a predetermined and false
    narrative.'' And their spokesperson says, ``We stand by our
    research team's excellent work, and are dismayed by these
    mischaracterizations of the team's efforts.''
        Let me just say, if Meta wants to come forward and answer
    questions, I'm sure that my colleagues and I would be glad to
    hear from them sitting at this table. And in fact, in the
    meantime, we are going to be writing them a letter. Senator
    Blackburn and I have been working on it. And once again, I
    thank her for her leadership demanding that Meta produce its
    research, and its research policies, and its practices
    concerning kids' safety. And if you are wrong, that is welcome
    to show us their evidence.
        In the meantime, The Washington Post article is, in my
    view, a searing indictment. And I know it's long, but I hope
    folks will read to the end of it, to the very end of it where
    Meta is quoted on its use of age verification with an ID card
    or credit card. And the way it uses that tool, if it suspects
    people are lying and about their age, and to help with another
    tool to help third party VR developers understand their users'
    ages.
        In 2023, apparently parents were surveyed and they said, in
    effect, this tool isn't working. And they were advised by Meta,
    a Meta lawyer, apparently, ``Maybe I can take a look and help
    you strategize a way to frame it so as to avoid these types of
    responses.''
        She advised they couldn't destroy the responses they'd
    already collected, but they could reduce or end these kinds of
    responses going forward. In other words, see no evil hear no
    evil. They don't know any evil because they're not going to ask
    the questions in a way that would elicit information.
        And the lawyer advised on another occasion, ``I would just
    phrase it in a way to ensure that participants do not volunteer
    information about users under 13.'' The article says the lawyer
    also checked with the researcher to see whether he had directly
    asked adults whether their children used Meta VR devices. The
    researcher said he had not. ``Okay. That's great,'' the lawyer
    replied.
        You know, when Meta denies that your testimony is accurate
    and correct, and then we have these kinds of direct evidence,
    it's hard to give any credit to what they say. And so, I invite
    them to respond to our letter, to give us the research, to show
    us the policies, to in effect, reveal what they've suppressed
    and how they have discouraged asking the questions that would
    show them the truth.
        And so, I want to thank both of you for coming forward to
    tell us the truth. And thank you, Madam Chair.
        Chair Blackburn. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. I wanted to
    ask you; you mentioned that bonuses were given on user
    engagement. Correct?
        Dr. Sattizahn. Correct.
        Chair Blackburn. Were bonuses ever given for creating
    safety protocols?
        Dr. Sattizahn. To answer that question, I was instructed
    over years for my safety and integrity work leading to
    protocols to be tied solely to engagement. So, in my
    professional opinion, engagement is not the best measure of if
    people are safe. It's if people are safe. Yet, from management
    and leadership, we were told repeatedly that safety initiatives
    had to be tied to user engagement.
        Chair Blackburn. There you go. And did you get the sense
    that Mr. Zuckerberg was intimately involved in decisionmaking
    around the suppression of child safety research?
        Ms. Savage. Would it be helpful to describe what the
    company used to be like before 2021?
        Dr. Sattizahn. I believe so. So, when I joined the company
    in 2018, we used to do things called Zuck reviews. This is when
    Mark Zuckerberg would come to us or to a team and say, ``Hey,
    I'd like you to do a presentation on Marketplace safety,
    Facebook dating,'' et cetera.
        When I joined in 2018, I would be in those reviews. I would
    make a slide. I was asked to contribute to those reviews. And
    magically, after Frances Haugen's disclosure in 2021, those
    Zuck reviews went away. Management and leadership still told us
    that they would have reviews with him about sensitive topics,
    but it was never directly stated if he saw your work.
        The reason that we were told from management and leadership
    was because they didn't want to have a trail of knowing that he
    was reviewing sensitive information. But because we were
    reviewed and our performance was reviewed, if higher ups had
    seen this stuff, management would look at the two of us and
    say, hey, it's going up to the higher ups. If it was the CTO,
    if it was the VP, or anybody else, they would use their name.
    And if it went up to Mark Zuckerberg, they'd say, hey, it went
    up the chain to leadership. But I don't know if you had another
    example for that.
        Ms. Savage. After 2021, that's the only thing that changed,
    is only the absence of Zuck or Mr. Zuckerberg's name.
        Chair Blackburn. So, in essence, what they did was change
    the culture to insulate themselves so they would not be sued by
    parents or by others. They suppressed the research. They used
    third-party vendors to put up a wall. And again, what we have
    seen them do is to put profit over children. And they have used
    children as a profit center when those children are online,
    regardless of the harms.
        I want to thank you all. You've been excellent witnesses,
    and we are very grateful. We would invite--I joined Senator
    Blumenthal, if someone from Meta, and I'm sure they are all
    watching this and they're texting one another back and forth,
    or signaling so they don't get caught. If they want to
    challenge what they've heard today, I would encourage them to
    come forward.
        I think that they see there is truly bipartisan anger, not
    only with Meta, but with these other social media platforms,
    and virtual reality platforms, and chatbots that are in
    intentionally knowingly harming our children. And this has got
    to stop. Enough is enough. We are intent on passing the Kids
    Online Safety Act. I think today has really laid out more of
    the reason for doing that.
        We will continue to submit questions to you for the
    Committee that will go through Tuesday, September 16 at 5 p.m.
    We would ask that you respond in a timely manner within a week
    to those questions.
        Chair Blackburn. We're grateful to you all. We are grateful
    to the parents, and this hearing----
        Senator Klobuchar. I just----
        Chair Blackburn. Yes, you go right ahead.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. I just want to thank you,
    Madam Chair, and our witnesses. And just to reiterate that the
    company can come before this Subcommittee. They can provide us
    answers, but the best way to resolve this is to get this bill
    passed. To realize there's more and more Senators that are
    interested in going even farther, and that this is a reality on
    this Committee right now, including with the Chair and Ranking
    Member of the entire Judiciary Committee, and that they need to
    start taking this seriously.
        If not for us, and whatever power we have, the fact that we
    were able to get some bills passed over the last few years, not
    nearly as much as we want, that they have to understand that we
    are very serious about this, and that this hearing and your
    willingness to come forward, the family's willingness to come
    forward can make change.
        It's just a question if they want to have any input in it,
    or if they just want to make anonymous or spokesperson'
    comments about it without actually willing to come forward. And
    so, we're ready to talk to them, but mostly, we want to get
    something done. We're tired of the talk.
        Chair Blackburn. Hearing adjourned. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 4:34 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
        [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                A P P E N D I X

    The following submissions are available at:

      https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-119shrg62327/pdf/CHRG-
        119shrg
        62327-add1.pdf

    Submitted by Senator Klobuchar:

     Horizon-Worlds-Exposed, statement................................     2

     Sattizahn, Jason, Further Declaration, statement.................    22

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