Meta Platforms Inc. reportedly suppressed internal research into safety concerns on its virtual reality platforms, including findings that a child under the age of 10 had been sexually propositioned in-app.

“Meta knew that underage children were using its products, but figured, ‘Hey, kids drive engagement,’ and it was making them cash,” Jason Sattizahn, one of the whistleblowers who worked on the company’s VR research, said in a statement. “Meta has compromised their internal teams to manipulate research and straight-up erase data that they don’t like.”

Sattizahn has joined former and current Meta employees who have handed over a trove of documents to Congress. On Tuesday, Sattizahn and Meta’s lead researcher on youth user experience for VR, Cayce Savage, will appear before the U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law in a meeting titled, “Hidden Harms: Examining Whistleblower Allegations that Meta Buried Child Safety Research.”

In response, Meta spokesperson Dani Lever pushed back on the claims, arguing they rely on “a few examples stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative.” Lever said that since early 2022, the company has approved nearly 180 Reality Labs studies on social issues such as youth safety and well-being. She added that the research has informed “significant product updates,” including new parental supervision tools, and noted that Meta’s VR headsets are intended for users aged 13 and older.

In what is shaping up to be a tough week for Meta, Attaullah Baig, its former head of security for WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit today claiming that Meta ignored profound security and privacy flaws that put users at risk, a violation of a $5 billion settlement then-WhatsApp parent company Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.

While Meta has denied the accusation, Baig says when he worked at the company, he “discovered systemic cybersecurity failures that posed serious risks to user data.” He alleges that about 1,500 engineers inside the messenger division had “unrestricted access to user data, including personal information covered by the FTC Privacy Order, and could move or steal such data without detection or audit trail.”

He claims on several occasions he notified his bosses, but no action was taken.

“This represented the first concrete step toward addressing WhatsApp’s fundamental data governance Failures,” the complaint stated. “Mr. Baig understood that Meta’s culture is like that of a cult where one cannot question any of the past work especially when it was approved by someone at a higher level than the individual who is raising the concern.”

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