OAN’s Avril Elfie
12:02 PM – Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Top tech executives at social media companies were grilled in a Senate hearing for failing to protect against child exploitation.
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On Wednesday, the CEOs of social media platforms Meta, X, TikTok, Snapchat and Discord were grilled at a Senate hearing over their efforts to stop online child sexual exploitation.
At the beginning of the hearing, a video of a child speaking on social media platforms about being a victim was shown.
One child said, “I was sexually exploited on Facebook.”
Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, presented statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, saying financial “sextortion” in which criminals trick minors into sending explicit photos and videos has increased in the last year. It showed a sudden increase.
“This alarming increase in child sexual exploitation is being driven by changes in technology,” Durbin said at the hearing.
When the CEOs entered the room, all the waiting parents were holding pictures of their children.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that there are “products that are killing people.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it, but you guys have blood on your hands,” Graham said. “The product you have developed will kill or injure people.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew previously said that TikTok’s community guidelines strictly prohibit “anything that puts teenagers at risk of exploitation or other harm” and that we vigorously enforce them. He wrote a testimony in which he added that he had been executed.
“We make careful product design choices to make our apps less livable for people who seek to harm teens,” Chu said.
Durbin said criminals are using the platform to prey on children and exchange information about child sexual abuse.
Zuckerberg’s Meta owns Instagram and Facebook. Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO. and Discord CEO Jason Citron are all scheduled to testify later Wednesday.
Spiegel said that Snapchat’s parental controls “provide a way for parents to monitor their teens’ activities in the real world, meaning parents want to know who their teens are spending time with, but private “You don’t have to listen to every conversation,” he said.
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