Meta Whistleblower and trial witness after $18 billion child safety settlement: “ongoing vigilance” needed to hold Meta accountable

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 26, 2026 – Meta will pay up to $18 billion to settle claims in a majority of U.S. states that the tech giant’s social media platforms harmed children. WhistleblowerAid.org client and former Meta researcher Dr. Jason Sattizahn released the following statement in the wake of the settlement announcement: “After repeated losses and nine-figure jury awards in just the first landmark jury trials, it’s clear that nothing short of public defeat and court-ordered platform changes will force Meta to do right by users. Today’s multi-state settlement is the result of persistence, perseverance and the power of truth, and it shows that change happens through community, through the steadfast commitment of parents, researchers, non-profits, legal advocates and whistleblowers who expose the relentless greed and complete disregard Meta has for basic user safety. And Meta only came to the table when their decades long campaign to protect themselves fell apart on the stand. Today’s settlement goes beyond Meta paying billions. Meta is finally being forced to make design changes for child safety — the same design changes readily available and consistently rejected by Meta leadership. Of course, given Meta’s track record of offering limited, faulty solutions to complex problems, the public should ask, ‘How effective will these design changes be? And how can we trust anything coming from Meta’s leadership?’ It’ll take our ongoing vigilance together to hold Meta accountable today and well into the future. Through my testimony in the U.S. Senate and on the witness stand, I shared my experiences as a researcher across Meta’s products. Despite Meta’s high priced legal gamesmanship, I and other Meta whistleblowers were finally free to tell the truth — and it finally forced the world’s largest social media company to address the world of harm it has created. But trials cannot change the soul of Meta as a company. Trials cannot change the culture or motives that emboldened Meta to manipulate research and erase data to hide a world of known harms to children on its platforms. What they may be able to do, though, is offer something of a mirror for Meta, forcing it to see what the public clearly does: its quest for growth created a societal menace. I hope this will be a wake up call for users, for Meta leadership and employees, for shareholders, and for regulators. These trials and settlements don’t just show us that we all need to demand more from Meta. They show us that if we as a community come together to hold even a $1 trillion company accountable, we can redefine expectations for how Meta operates.” Dr. Sattizahn has served as a witness in trials brought by state Attorneys General against Meta over the harm its platforms have continued to cause to children and its business plan built on public deception. In February of this year, he was a key witness in the New Mexico trial that resulted in a $375 million verdict against Meta — and more importantly imposed mandatory reforms of its business practices. Last year, Dr. Sattizahn, along with fellow former Meta researcher Cayce Savage and four anonymous whistleblowers, revealed to Congress that not only do Meta’s platforms expose young users to harmful content and online predators — but Meta’s response to grieving families amounted to empty apologies and ever more public lies. They gave accounts of how the tech giant censored its employees, buried their internal child safety research, diverted research away from known safety problems and destroyed evidence. On September 9, 2025, Dr. Sattizahn and Ms. Savage testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee about the disregard of child safety they witnessed at Meta. WhistleblowerAid.org is a pioneering non-profit legal organization founded in 2017 that helps public and private sector workers report and expose wrongdoing safely, lawfully, and responsibly. ###