Mark Zuckerberg’s mega-social network Meta is under fire.
Sen. Ashley Moody has signed onto a bipartisan letter with fellow members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law probing the use of the platform by children under the age of 13.
“We heard bombshell testimony from two Meta whistleblowers about how the platform censored, blocked and even required the deletion of research into the prevalence and underlying causes of harms to young people on its platforms. As a concerned mother myself, it is infuriating to hear allegations that this company put profits over the health and safety of young children. We’re now demanding Meta provide all child safety research gathered,” Moody said Friday.
The letter is just as direct as Moody’s statement, probing “disturbing allegations presented by several whistleblowers that Meta has willfully misrepresented the mental health risks, sexual exploitation issues, underage use, and other abuses against young people that are rampant on its platforms.”
The Senators allege Meta “censored, blocked, and even required the deletion of research into the prevalence and underlying causes of harms to young people on its platforms, including within its Reality Labs (virtual reality) division,” and “routinely altered, blocked, and shutdown work on teen safety, limited internal access to information, circumvented normal review processes, used attorney-client privilege to conceal research, and even required the destruction of data.”
The Senators also claim Meta marketed virtual reality products to children as young as 10 years old “before any meaningful research on the potential dangers had occurred (beyond mere studies on the physical safety of wearing the headset) and despite deep concerns from internal experts that VR might be inherently more dangerous than already dangerous and harmful traditional social media products.”
While Meta allegedly blocked internal research, the whistleblowers sought to find out the effects of the product on youth through third-party channels.
The findings allegedly included “rampant bullying within VR (Children bullying adults; adults bullying children; children bullying other children.); children experiencing and participating in hate speech (i.e. users saying ‘Your [sic] black you have no rights’); pedophilic acts, including adults virtually simulating child rape (i.e. users saying ‘Thanks meta for making this the pedophile kingdom’); children sharing personally identifying information with strangers (i.e. home address); grooming; children willingly simulating sexual acts with each other and with adults; children being exposed to adult culture, including drugs, violence, and vulgar language.”
While parental controls exist, they seem to have been deemphasized. The Senators allege only 2% of parents turned them on, suggesting they didn’t know of the option.
Post Views: 0
