Social media CEOs were summoned to a hearing and faced with tough questions
The heads of social media giants Meta, X, TikTok, Snap and Discord faced tough questions about their efforts to combat online child sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing today.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, cited statistics from the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showing that incidents of “sextortion,” in which an online predator tricks a minor into to send him obscene photos and videos, have been launched over the past year. “The alarming increase in child sexual exploitation is due to one thing: changes in technology,” Durbin noted during the hearing.
At the start of today’s meeting, the committee presented a video where children report being targeted on social media platforms. “I was sexually exploited on Facebook,” said one child in the video, whose features could not be distinguished. In the room, dozens of parents stood waiting for the CEOs to enter, holding pictures of their children. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you didn’t want it to be this way, but you have blood on your hands,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and adding: “You have a product that kills people.”
Today will also be the first appearance since March of TikTok CEO Su Zi-Chu before US senators, when the Chinese short-form video platform faced tough questions, including whether it is damaging children’s mental health. “We make careful choices in product design to make our app inhospitable to those who seek to harm teenagers,” Chu noted, adding that TikTok’s community guidelines strictly prohibit anything that “puts teens at risk of exploitation or other harm and we apply them vigorously.”
Chu revealed that more than 170 million Americans use TikTok monthly, 20 million more than the company reported last year. In response to Graham’s questions, he said Tiktok will spend more than $2 billion on security. Durbin pointed out that the platforms are used by criminals to target children or exchange child sexual abuse material.
Zuckerberg, whose company Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, X CEO Linda Giaccarino, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord chief Jason Citron testified at the hearing. “We are committed to protecting young people from abuse on our services, but this is an ongoing challenge,” Zuckerberg said in a statement, adding that “as we improve defenses in one area, criminals change their tactics and we have to find new answers.”
Zuckerberg reiterated that the company does not plan to proceed with the implementation of a previous idea, to create a children’s version of Instagram. Senator Amy Klobuchar questioned whether the tech giants were acting inert, comparing the situation to the internet, to the response given when a Boeing lost a door during a flight earlier this month. “When a Boeing aircraft lost a door in flight weeks ago, no one questioned the decision to ground the fleet… So why don’t we take the same kind of decisive action in the face of the danger of these platforms when we know children are dying? Klobuchar asked.
