Very Very Concerned Parent of Teen Meta Account

[JasD]

It was my son's birthday, a milestone, so we pushed the boat out and bought the Meta Quest 3.

We don't do social media, but we thought we were buying a Virtual Reality Games console.  It seems we might have been wrong.  After reluctantly getting Meta Accounts for me and my son, (oh, he is a "teen" so has to have his own account), I thought I had set all the settings to private etc.  I am not so sure now.

2 days in and he was playing and chatting to a 44 year old man from Austria on a ping-pong game.  What the actual ... ????? 

He hasn't, but he could, remove parent supervision from his account.  What!!?

Customer support are utterly useless and just send me links that bear no reflection to the pages I can see in my or his account.  And now the chat has disappeared altogether (have they blocked me?).  Not a single solitary phone line in the entire company.  How can one of the largest internet companies in the world not have a phone line.  It is a disgrace.

So can you help?

1. How do I check privacy settings? I set them all to private on setup but did it work, and now I can't find them in his or my account to check.

2. How do I stop strangers contacting him at all?  This should be a parental choice not his, I thought I had turned this off.  Clearly not.

3. How do I stop him turning off parental supervision?  He can do this in his account.  Why?

4. What games/settings should I block so that his experience is amazing but doesn't involve the potential dangers of an open internet?

As it stands, the interface is a serious risk to children.  Meta seems to be sharpening their knifes to reel him in for a data-mining  exercise and social media addiction, but they should know better, they have been told before.  It is an amazing piece of hardware and firmware controlled by an unscrupulous company that pay lip-service to, but have no regard for, his online safety.

So I am turning to this community for help.  Please help.

[JasD]

Hi @MetaQuestSupport 

Let me respond to your answer:

"the resources we have provided are the options related to parent managed accounts."

Yet you have not given me practical help in finding or managing them through the Family Centre, my account or my Son's account.  Step by step please, so that I know they are really there.

"We completely understand your concerns regarding your child's exposure to other users. Which is why we have policies in place to help ensure whichever options you feel fit for your child's account."

Yet I have asked you how to do specific tasks, for example, with respect to stopping strangers contact him, and yet you continue to avoid step by step practical help to do so.  Online links do not address my specific requests.

"Meta policy regarding "Teen" accounts does start from 13 and above."

What does this mean, in practical terms?

"Alternatively, if you wish, you can make a Meta account and assign your account as the primary account for the Meta Quest 3. This will allow you to app share for games you deem as appropriate for the secondary account on the device, in this case your child's account."

This is Meta's platform and it is entirely unreasonable to expect me to search, read, review, try, block or share all the apps on the platform.  It is your responsibility and duty to provide a safe environment for children and ensure your app providers adhere to strict rules on child safety.  I have not seen Meta's rules on child safety, I doubt they really have any, but it they do exists somewhere, then contact via voice or message to children within an app by strangers, particularly adult strangers, should certainly be banned.   But it isn't.

"However we cannot restrict other users on games you or your child chooses to play."

Yes you can.

"If your child does come across something seemed abusive either by another play or content within a title you can report a user via the headset."

This is simply not sufficient.  The emphasis should be on prevention. Simple methods, as stated by myself above regarding blocking contact from strangers, should be implemented.  A report button has many flaws, notwithstanding that the abuse has already happened by that point.

"Regarding your request for apps that have permission options, all games and apps on our store provides ratings through the ESRB based off the type of content for each title."

I have already stated that app ratings do not stop child predators from finding children on your platform, in-fact, they tell them where they are. 

"We would not be able to provide a list of every game and app as there are hundreds of apps and games. "

Yet you expect me to go through them and either ban or share.  This is simply not good enough.

"We do hope this provides some additional options and resources for your concerns."

No it doesn't.

So let me share something very relevant to Meta, with you.

https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/media/3341/child-safeguarding-immersive-technologies.pdf

Some highlights:

From the NSPCC CEO

"Last year, I used a virtual reality headset for the frist time and stumbled across two avatars playing basketball in the metaverse. I was thrown a virtual ball and decided to take a few shots.  ...........I realised that these were two children, I would guess between 9 and 12 years – signifcantly below the 18+ age rating – and after speaking with them, I realised that these boys did not know each other in real life. They had met in a virtual chat room"

"What struck me was how lifelike the experience seemed and the ease in which children and adults are able to connect and engage "

Executive Summary

"Despite the evidence for risks to children posed by immersive technology, and their predictability, there is also substantial evidence to show that tech companies failed to prioritise child safeguarding when designing their platforms"

Section on "Sexual grooming in VR muli-user spaces"

"In theory, there are various ways offenders could exploit interactions in VR multi-user spaces to groom and solicit children. Offenders can start a conversation in the VR space and build up a trusting relationship with a child"

You may think you are doing your job by replying with non-specific, unuseful links, but you are actually facilitating an environment that is dangerous to children. 

I would like you to give me clear step-by-step, reasonable instructions on how to make your platform safe, or admission that this isn't safe for children and how you plan to address this.

Since you refuse to engage in a dialogue on the phone or on a headset, on this forum is how we will do it.

[The_1st_Dark_Lord_Morgoth · Accepted solution]

Hey, @JasD! I wanted to hop in on this conversation and offer some insight about what support is saying about Parent-Managed accounts. The link I shared explains how Meta allows parents to monitor and control their child's activity and choose appropriate games for them. Since every parent has different rules, not all T and M rated games are automatically banned.

Regarding banning users from games, it's up to the game developers to make that call. If someone is misbehaving, they should be reported to the developer for action. Meta doesn't decide who gets banned, we just provide the platform for the game, similar to Valve and PlayStation VR.

Parent-Managed accounts are a new feature that came out in September of last year, and while it may not be perfect, it's always changing and improving. The best place to voice your concerns on the forums, where we've seen features later implemented in future updates, are the Ideas boards. There, users and other developers trade suggestions and other ideas with each other that help improve VR for all of our users as well as keep it safe for our younger users. I hope this sheds some light on Parent-Managed accounts, and that your child can keep enjoying their headset under your supervision!

[JasD]

Hi @tHe_1st_Dark_Lord_Morgoth

Thank you for joining in the conversation, I really appreciate your openness and constructive suggestions.

You may have slightly misunderstood my thought process.  I am not asking that users be banned from certain games or indeed any game, merely that strange adults are not able to contact within a game or the platform, via voice or message, any child that they do not know.  Especially with privacy settings set to private.

Additionally, parental control/supervision should be just that, and it should be a discussion between the parent/carer of the child and the child, which features to allow.  Not a button in the headset or account that the child can freely chose to control.

Parent-Managed accounts may well be a new feature as of September, but lets be honest, Meta is not new to the party and know exactly what is safe and what is not.  So whereas the ideas board is great for new features, stopping strange adults contacting children is not new.  It would be analogous to suggesting a great new idea for a purpose built child-seat for a car and hoping someone decides to make them.  The truth is, they already make child car-seats and it is the law to use them (in the UK at least) because it keeps children safe.  So whereas I think an Ideas board is good, child safety should not be a suggestion but mandatory, the technology to implement simple measures is already there and should be used, yet as far as I can tell, Meta have chosen not to.

Please correct me if I am wrong, the features I have am trying to access are not available and the Meta development team are dragging their feet?  This is seems to contravene several articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child "General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment", legislation or not;

https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2fC%2fGC%2f25...

not least

"77. ....... States parties should require an approach integrating safety-by-design and privacy-by-design to anonymity, while ensuring that anonymous practices are not routinely used to hide harmful or illegal behaviour, such as cyber-aggression, hate speech or sexual exploitation and abuse."

As you can see, this is way past Ideas Boards.  Links to general information which expose the limitations of Meta's child safety measures are not going to suffice.

Can anyone at Meta address my specific points, one by one, which focus on keeping my child safe on your platform and having sufficient oversight of his safety via parent controls?

As I have mentioned, if Meta continue to refuse to engage and instead hide behind message boards with no contact number, then I have no option but to continue this discussion on this forum.

[JasD]

Sorry @BlueberrieSmoothie , this is not solved.

[BlueberrieSmoothie]

Hey @JasD. I can definitely understand the concern of seeing your thread marked have a "solution" when it your issue isn't resolved yet. So I just wanted to provide some clarification on why I marked a solution on this thread, and why we mark solutions in general on the forums. 

Having an accepted solution on a thread doesn't mean your issue is fully resolved. We just don't have any other way to pin a comment here on the forums! The moderation team wants to make sure that anyone else who may be having the same issue as you can find the most relevant resources and info they need, and the easiest way to do that is by accepting a solution on the thread.

I actually went ahead and just marked @The_1st_Dark_Lord_Morgoth's most recent reply as the solution on this thread, since it has the most helpful info and resources for anyone else who may be having issues with their Parent-Managed account.

[kdupreez]

Parental controls on Meta Quest is utterly useless..

My 8 year old keeps getting "recommended contacts" pushed by Meta to him on who he should follow/friend..

There is no way to turn this off and no way to protect my 8 year old from online predators on this platform..

Meta is a DANGEROUS company with ZERO morals to protect children. 

They RELY in fact on making their platforms as attractive and addictive to children as possible in order to lure them onto the platform and its services.. they just care about money.. not your children.

[Choleni]

My 8 year old keeps getting "recommended contacts" pushed by Meta to him on who he should follow/friend

Probably because he don't use a child account, otherwise he won't get those recommendations.

Additional to that.... Meta child accounts are staring with the age 10, not 8.

[kdupreez]

Yea- like that makes it any better??  

So its OK for sexual predators to have direct unsupervised contact a 10yr old then??

I myself using an adult account don't want to see random stranger recommendations.. There is no way to turn it off..

Like I said, Meta doesnt care.. 8, 10 12 or 16 year old.. they dont care.

[Choleni]

So its OK for sexual predators to have direct unsupervised contact a 10yr old then??

Of course not, you misunderstood me. A child account won't get friend/follower recommendations.

I myself using an adult account don't want to see random stranger recommendations.. There is no way to turn it off.

Yes, the option to turn that off, even for adult accounts is a good idea.

You should post it in Ideas forum.