Six current and former Meta employees detailed concerns about the company's handling of user data and its approach toward safety research following previous whistleblower complaints in documents shared with Congress.
"Meta has knowingly, willfully, intentionally swung the door wide open on exposing these children to social media harms when they are on their platform," Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday ahead of a hearing with two of the whistleblowers, former Meta researchers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage.
They have accused Meta of doctoring and restricting research into safety concerns in an effort to avoid legal liability, noting a "vast and negative change" following the revelations by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021.
Haugen appeared before Congress nearly four years ago, alleging the company was aware of the negative impacts of its platforms on young users but chose to prioritize profits over people.
After these revelations, the whistleblowers said several research areas, including youth and product harm issues, were deemed "sensitive" and came under the scrutiny of Meta's legal team.
"Put differently: after Ms. Haugen exposed Meta's internal research which established leadership's explicit knowledge about the platform's harms toward children, Meta redefined the scope of the research in order to establish plausible deniability while simultaneously publicly stating that it has increased tools and systems to mitigate those harms," a disclosure to Congress reads.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pushed back on the allegations, arguing the claims are "nonsense" and based on "selectively leaked internal documents" selected to "craft a false narrative."
"The truth is there was never any blanket prohibition on conducting research with young people and, since the start of 2022, Meta approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on issues including youth safety and well-being," he said in a statement.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com later tonight.
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