[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
[all]