During four hours of hearings on Wednesday, U.S senators made one thing clear: tech companies need to be held responsible for not protecting young users from harm.
Five major tech company executives were grilled at the hearing: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, X (formerly Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Chew and Discord CEO Jason Citron. Lawmakers accused each executive of facilitating child sexual abuse online, suggesting the companies are partly to blame for the deaths of children who have suffered from bullying and predatory users.
In his opening remarks, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told tech CEOs, “You have blood on your hands.”
“You have a product that’s killing people … You can’t be sued, you should be! It is now time to repeal Section 230,” Graham said.
Graham is referring to the federal law that immunizes websites and social media platforms for their content moderation decisions from lawsuits arising from user-generated content.
Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar used her time to share stories from parents whose children were harmed by social media platforms, including young people who committed suicide after being threatened by predators online. Studies have shown a dramatic rise in teen suicide, with a strong correlation between social media use and negative mental health.
“I’m so tired of this,” Klobuchar said. “It’s been 28 years … since the start of the internet. We haven’t passed any of these bills, because everyone’s ‘double talk, double talk.’ It’s time to actually pass them.”
Other lawmakers called out tech CEOs for manipulating users with algorithms. Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy accused Meta specifically of being a “killing field of information” where users “see only one side of an issue”:
“You have convinced over 2 billion people to give up all of their personal information — every bit of it — in exchange for getting to see what their high school friends had for dinner Saturday night. And you take this information, this abundance of personal information, and then you develop algorithms to punch people’s hot buttons … again and again and again, to keep them coming back and to keep them staying longer. And as a result, your users see only one side of an issue, and so to some extent, your platform has become a killing field for the truth, isn’t it? … I just wonder if our technology is greater than our humanity in the interest of this funnel.”
In response to the accusations, Zuckerberg offered an apology to the families who were in the hearing room.
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” he said. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”
Spiegel also apologized specifically to families whose children died after they purchased drugs on Snapchat.
“I’m so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies,” Spiegel said.
However, despite both parties not holding back on going for tech CEOs’ throats, Congress has yet to pass any legislation that would regulate social media companies. In the last decade, the only action taken by Congress to protect kids’ safety online addressed online child sex trafficking. Most of the action, if at all, has taken place in state legislatures and in the courts.
“I am tired of talking. I’m tired of having discussions. Open up the courthouse door. Until you do that, nothing will change. Until these people can be sued for the damage they’re doing, it is all talk,” Graham said.
