Meta Whistleblowers allege that the company has buried children’s safety information

The denunciators allege that Meta has deleted research on the risks for young children involving virtual devices and applications, including information on children’s predators, according to a new Washington Post report.

The newspaper reports that the congress has received thousands of pages of documents related to Meta’s virtual reality programs, four researchers presenting themselves to discuss their experiences with the company. Two of the researchers are currently working for Meta, and two are former employees.

In one of the most shocking claims, a Meta researcher would have been invited to delete information collected during an interview with a family in Germany. A family of the family “frequently encountered foreigners”, and a teenager would have told researchers that “adults had sexually proposed his little brother”. Her little brother was under 10 years old, depending on the position.

The Washington Post reports that an internal meta metal report noted that German parents and adolescents were worried about grooming via virtual reality in the horizon worlds, but the report has not included anything about the adolescent who said that his young brother had been targeted. But Meta denies the characterization that everything that is inappropriate has happened while he was putting research.

“These few examples are assembled to adapt to a predetermined and false story; in reality since the beginning of 2022, Meta approved nearly 180 studies linked to reality laboratories on social issues, including young people and well-being,” said a spokesperson from Meta to Gizmodo by email. Reality Labs is Meta’s VR division.

“This research has contributed to updates of important products such as new supervision tools for parents to see with whom their adolescents are connected in virtual reality, how long they spend and the applications to which they access. We have also introduced automatic protections so that adolescents limit unwanted contacts, such as default channels in the horizon worlds, so that individuals can only hear or be heard of unwanted people they know as well as personal limits, “said the declaration.

“We maintain the excellent work of our research team and are dismayed by these errors in characterizing the team’s efforts.”

The allegations are involved while the technology giant gets heat about a series of articles by Reuters Jeff Horwitz journalist detailing a set of policies that seem enormously lax when it comes to the way IA chatbots interact with children.

An internal document from Meta gave the green light for her generative AI chatbots to start “sensual” conversations with children, according to Reuters. The report caused indignation against Capitol Hill, where Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri republican, said last month that he had launched an investigation into Meta AI policies and how technology could interact with children.

“Is there anything – anything – Big Tech will not be for a small money?” Hawley tweeted on August 15. “Now we learn that Meta chatbots have been scheduled to continue to speak explicit and” sensual “with 8 -year -old children. It’s sick. I launch a complete investigation to get answers. Big Tech: Leave our children quiet. “

Meta, who has changed the name of her Facebook parent company in 2021, has spent billions of dollars in recent years with the aim of making the general public reality. Facebook first made a big investment in VR in 2014, buying Oculus. But it is always an incredibly niche offer that most people ignore. Reality Labs would have lost $ 60 billion, according to the post.

The Senate Judicial Committee is expected to hold an audience on Tuesday afternoon which will explore the allegations made by the denouncitors. The title of the hearing: “Hidden damage: examine the allegations of denunciation according to which Meta buried the research on children’s safety”.

The news also announced on Monday that the former WhatsApp security chief, who also belongs to Meta, had filed a complaint in California according to which company employees “could access sensitive user data, in particular profile images, location, group subscriptions and contact lists”. Large companies are continued all the time. But, it goes without saying that Meta is to obtain it from all angles with regard to the denunciators who are concerned about confidentiality and security.