Overview

• Ten senators led by Marsha Blackburn sent a letter Tuesday pressing Meta to provide assessments of product impacts on children and data on the use and effectiveness of parental controls.
• The request also seeks records of internal research proposals related to young users and whether those applications were denied, altered or approved.
• Former Meta safety researchers recently told senators the company shut down studies indicating children used its VR products and encountered sexually explicit material.
• The push follows a Reuters report that an internal Meta policy allowed chatbots to engage in romantic or sensual conversations with minors, which Meta says was an erroneous example that has been removed.
• Meta has rejected the whistleblowers’ claims, saying there was no blanket ban on youth research and pointing to recent actions including purging more than 600,000 predator accounts and expanding teen protections, as broader Senate scrutiny also examines AI chatbot risks and related lawsuits.