Former Meta employees have
come forward alleging that the tech giant buried internal research findings focused on safety concerns regarding users under the age of 13, including negative effects stemming from Meta's virtual
reality (VR) products and platforms.
According to a report from The Washington Post, four whistleblowers have disclosed “a trove of documents” to Congress
detailing potential harms for children using Meta's immersive Horizon Worlds gaming platform.
“After leaked Meta studies led to congressional hearings in 2021, the company
deployed its legal team to screen, edit and sometimes veto internal research about youth safety in VR,” the report states, adding that in doing so, Meta's legal team was working to
“establish plausible deniability” surrounding any harmful effects for minors using the company's products.
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More specifically, a former Meta researcher focused on VR claims that he
was ordered to delete recordings of a teen stating that his 10-year-old brother was sexually propositioned in Horizon Worlds.
In response, Meta said that “global privacy regulations make
clear that if information from minors under 13 years of age is collected without verifiable parental or guardian consent, it has to be deleted.”
The report also alleges that Horizon
Worlds, like other immersive gaming platforms, failed to restrict underage
users from registering and partaking in gameplay.
“As early as April 2017, Meta's staff saw the rules being broken,” the report says, with one employee estimating at one time that
in some virtual Horizon Worlds rooms “as many as 80 to 90 percent of users were underage,” as “three young kids (6? 7?) were chatting with a much older man who was asking them where
they lived.”
In response to these allegations, Meta says that “these few examples are being stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative,” citing “180
Reality Labs-related studies on social issues, including youth safety and well-being.”
The report follows widely criticized updates Meta has made to Horizon Worlds, including last year's
decision to
allow children between the ages of 10 and 12 to connect with other
players after receiving parental consent, despite whistleblowers' insistence that Meta's Quest headsets are not designed for users under 13 years of age.
Shortly after lowering its age restrictions to “tweens,” the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) argued that Meta violated COPPA and “put young users at risk” by misleading parents and collecting data from minors through its virtual reality products.
Meta
denied these allegations and litigation is pending.
Prior to this report, Meta announced that it was changing the ways in which it trains its AI assistant in response to recent investigative reports showing the company's chatbot personas' ability
to flirt and engage in romantic role play with minors.