Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday urged Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg to respond to whistleblower accusations that the company “willfully” and “intentionally” pushed virtual-reality products it knew were harming children, after two former employees testified to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
Former Meta researchers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage testified Tuesday that their work documenting children’s exposure to sexual content — including nudity, masturbation and propositions for sexual activity — was suppressed inside the company. Blackburn said she found the witnesses credible and invited Zuckerberg to rebut their claims.
"If he wants to refute what they are saying, my door is open and I would welcome the opportunity to work with him on this issue," Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who has pushed for stronger online safety measures for children, told the New York Post. She said the witnesses had "made copious notes" and were frustrated that Meta continued to promote a product they believed was causing mental-health harm to minors.
Sattizahn and Savage said they were tasked with studying the impact of Reality Labs, the division built around virtual-reality hardware and software that Meta began after acquiring Oculus in 2014. They told senators they had found many users under the age of 13 on Meta’s VR platforms and that the company took minimal steps to prevent such access, according to their testimony.
A total of six whistleblowers have come forward with concerns about Meta’s handling of its VR program. The disclosures come amid renewed scrutiny of the tech industry’s treatment of young users after earlier congressional hearings over Facebook’s and Instagram’s impact on teenagers.
Meta has forcefully disputed the whistleblowers’ account. A company spokesperson told the New York Post that the "accusations detailed in the hearing were based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative." The spokesperson said there was never a blanket prohibition on doing research with young people and that, since the start of 2022, Meta has approved nearly 180 Reality Labs–related studies on youth safety and well-being.
The company also said engineers have built safety features into its devices and that its platforms are meant for users 13 and older. "We have also introduced automatic protections for teens to limit unwanted contact, like default voice channel settings in Horizon Worlds, so individuals can hear or be heard only from people they know, as well as personal boundaries," the spokesperson said.
Blackburn said she remained unconvinced by Meta’s defense and called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. She renewed her advocacy for the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, a bill she cosponsors with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that would establish a "duty of care" for online platforms and grant parents tools to set parameters for children’s use of social and virtual spaces.
The bill, which overwhelmingly passed the Senate last year, would require internet platforms to take "reasonable care" to protect minors from sexual abuse, bullying, violence and other harms. It has not received a House vote. Critics, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have argued the legislation could raise free-speech problems and contains language that is too broad.
"In the physical world, we have laws on child endangerment," Blackburn said, rejecting free-speech objections. "We have laws that say you cannot expose a child to pornography. But when it comes to the virtual space, people want to act like you can’t have anything that would restrict exposure of these harms to a child. So this is not a free speech issue."
Blackburn, who won re-election to the Senate last year and is running for Tennessee governor next year, said parents and children are tired of ongoing online safety concerns and pledged to continue investigating the matter.
Meta has invested heavily in virtual reality as part of a broader strategy that led to the corporate rebrand to Meta and the creation of Reality Labs. In recent months, however, the company has shifted more of its public strategy toward artificial intelligence while continuing development of VR hardware and software.
The Senate subcommittee hearing and the whistleblowers’ testimony add to ongoing congressional and regulatory scrutiny of Meta’s products and policies for young users. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed interest in tighter oversight of technology companies’ impact on children, even as debates continue over the best balance between safety measures and free-speech protections.
