News Investigation

NBC News: Former Meta Employees Say They Saw Child Abuse in VR Before Company Blocked Research

Sep 2025 🇺🇸 NBC News

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Reporting by NBC News' David Ingram and Julie Tsirkin covers the sworn testimony and underlying disclosure of former Meta researchers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, who told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that Meta's virtual-reality products exposed children to bullying, unwanted sexual contact, and solicitation, and that the company restricted or erased research documenting it. The article describes a specific account in which Sattizahn said a research team's findings — that children in Germany had been sexually solicited on a Meta VR platform — were ordered deleted, and quotes Sattizahn characterizing Meta's internal posture as prioritizing engagement because, in his words, "kids drive engagement." The piece also carries Meta's on-record denial. TechKids Foundation cites this reporting as journalism corroborating the whistleblowers' association between passive, underage VR use and documented risk — not as a finding of legal liability.

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CITATION

Ingram, D. & Tsirkin, J. 'Former Meta employees say they saw child abuse in VR before the company blocked research.' NBC News, Sept. 9, 2025.

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