Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 18, 2025

Whistleblowers who said they were hired by Meta/Facebook to make the platform safer for children testified in a Senate hearing on Tuesday that the social media colossus considers it “acceptable” to engage children in conversations that are “romantic and sensual.”

Dr. Jason Sattizahn, who testified he spent six years working as a research for Meta, “working in some of their most sensitive spaces,” stated: “Meta consistently chooses profit over safety.”

From 2018 to 2024, Sattizahn said he saw Meta higher ups rejected “simple safety measures” such as “not allowing people to message strangers with a single click.”

Sattizahn also conducted research on Meta’s use of VR (virtual reality) and how that company’s VR headsets were banned in Germany for two years before being cleared for re-sale. He said his research “uncovered that under-aged 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.”

The whistleblower said that Meta ordered Sattizahn’s team to “erase any evidence of such dangers that we saw.”

Cayce Savage, who worked for Meta as user experience researcher from 2019 to 2023 and led research on youth safety and VR, said it became clear “that Meta is uninterested and unwilling to listen to their users and prioritize their safety.”

Savage said Meta refuses to scrutinize child safety in VR without pressure from “outside regulators” and then “scramble to develop features they know are insufficient and largely unused.”

Meta is “aware that children are being harmed in VR,” Savage continued.

The hearing in its entirety:

  Testimony cited Meta-Facebook policy: ‘Acceptable’ to engage a child in ‘romantic and sensual’ conversations