(Reuters) -Facebook parent Meta Platforms put profit from its virtual-reality platform over safety, two former researchers told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

Former Meta user experience researcher Cayce Savage said the company shut down internal research showing Meta knew children were using its VR products and being exposed to sexually explicit material.

"Meta cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the safety or use of its products," Savage said at the hearing before the Senate subcommittee on privacy and technology.

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Meta has come under fire from members of Congress in recent weeks, after Reuters exclusively reported on an internal policy document that permitted the company’s chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”

"Does it surprise you that they would allow their chatbot to engage in these conversations with children?" Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, asked former Meta Reality Labs researcher Jason Sattizahn, who also testified at the hearing on Tuesday.

"No, not at all," he said.

Meta has previously said the examples reported by Reuters were inconsistent with the company's policies and had been removed.

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Savage and Sattizahn are part of a group of current and former Meta employees whose whistleblower claims were first reported by the Washington Post on Monday.

Researchers were told not to investigate harms to children using its VR technology so that it could claim ignorance of the problem,...

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