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Tech CEOs Told ‘You Have Blood on Your Hands’ at U.S. Senate Child Safety Hearing
U.S. senators on Wednesday grilled leaders of the biggest social media companies and said Congress must quickly pass legislation, as one lawmaker accused the companies of having “blood on their hands” for failing to protect children from escalating threats of sexual predation on their platforms.
The hearing marks the latest effort by lawmakers to address the concerns of parents and mental health experts that social media companies put profits over guardrails that would ensure their platforms do not harm children.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, referring to Meta (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “You have a product that’s killing people.”
Zuckerberg testified along with X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Snap (SNAP.N) CEO Evan Spiegel, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Discord CEO Jason Citron.
In the hearing room, dozens of parents held pictures of their children who they said had been harmed due to social media. Some parents jeered Zuckerberg, whose company owns Facebook and Instagram, during his opening statement and shouted comments at other points during the hearing.
Mark Zuckerberg Was Forced to Physically Stand Up and Face Families Affected by Online Abuse
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to turn and face the families of children who were harmed by social media companies head-on during a contentious Senate hearing on Wednesday.
The shocking moment was prompted by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley during an intense hearing on online child safety before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Hawley asked if Zuckerberg had apologized to the families, saying “Your products are killing people.” He then asked Zuckerberg if he’d like to directly apologize to the families who attended the hearings whose children were harmed or died from the impacts of social media.
Many senators in the hearing floated stripping away legal protections from social media companies, meaning they could be sued for child pornography or other sexually explicit material on their platforms.
New York Judge Rejects Madison Square Garden’s Bid to Dismiss Biometric Privacy Case Involving Facial Recognition
A New York judge has denied Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s motion to dismiss a biometric privacy lawsuit. The litigation revolves around a contentious policy, enacted by MSGE, which deployed facial recognition technology to prohibit certain attorneys from gaining entry into the entertainment giant’s renowned venues.
The lawsuit had previously survived MSGE’s initial attempt to dismiss it. The entertainment firm once again finds itself rebuffed in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, despite raising multiple arguments pleading for a dismissal.
The suit will move forward, as ruled by the presiding judge, focusing on whether MSGE’s tactics violate the city’s Biometric Identifier Information Protection Law. Even though the judge acknowledged MSGE’s rationale for wanting to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims of civil rights violations and unjust enrichment, the alleged breach of the city’s biometrics statute remains a query.
U.S. Receives Thousands of Reports of AI-Generated Child Abuse Content in Growing Risk
The U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) said it had received 4,700 reports last year about content generated by artificial intelligence that depicted child sexual exploitation.
The NCMEC told Reuters the figure reflected a nascent problem that is expected to grow as AI technology advances.
In recent months, child safety experts and researchers have raised the alarm about the risk that generative AI tech, which can create text and images in response to prompts, could exacerbate online exploitation.
The NCMEC has not yet published the total number of child abuse content reports from all sources that it received in 2023, but in 2022 it received reports of about 88.3 million files.
Nevada Files Lawsuit Against Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Snapchat and TikTok: ‘Hazard to Public Health’
The state of Nevada is suing some of the most popular social media companies, alleging that their apps are intentionally addictive and have contributed to a decline in mental health for its users, especially teens and young adults.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford filed civil lawsuits Tuesday against the parent companies of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Snapchat and TikTok apps, claiming they are a “hazard to public health” and that they use “false, deceptive and unfair marketing” to directly appeal to youth.
The lawsuit also says the respective apps’ algorithms are “designed deliberately to addict young minds and prey on teenagers’ well-understood vulnerabilities.”
Mark Zuckerberg Says Apple and Google Should Manage Parental Consent for Apps, Not Meta
In today’s online safety hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg again pushed back at the idea that businesses like his should be responsible for managing parental consent systems for kids’ use of social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram. Instead, he suggested the problem should be dealt with by the app store providers, like Apple and Google, he said.
This is not the first time Meta has floated the idea. Last November, the company introduced a proposal that argued that Apple and Google should do more with regard to kids’ and teens’ safety by requiring parental approval when users aged 13 to 15 download certain apps.
His suggestion is a clever maneuver by Meta, as it effectively turns Apple’s desire to profit from the apps on its app stores against them. Today, Apple takes a 15% to 30% commission on all in-app purchases that take place through iOS apps, depending on the business’s size and other factors.
Or, simply put, Meta is saying that if Apple wants to be the payment processor for all iOS apps, at a cost to Meta’s profits, then parental consent over app usage should be Apple’s problem, too.
NY Government Gears Up for Fight Against TikTok, Facebook and Other Social Media Giants
Mayor Eric Adams says it’s a public health hazard. Gov. Kathy Hochul calls it “poison.” Attorney General Letitia James claims it’s a “crisis.” In recent weeks, some of New York’s top elected officials have used their bully pulpits to take aim against what, for them, has become a common enemy: Social media and its effect on kids.
Lawmakers across 35 states and Puerto Rico introduced legislation last year that was spurred by concern over social media’s effect on youth mental health, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Of those, 12 states adopted measures with varying degrees of action, including New Jersey, which launched a commission to study the issue.
Now, New York is on the verge of joining them, with Hochul and James pushing a pair of measures that would restrict social media platforms from collecting data from minors and exposing them to addictive algorithms.
And in New York City, Adams’ administration issued a public health advisory last week warning parents not to give their kids access to smartphones or other devices that can access social media until at least age 14.
Europe Is Rushing to Tighten Oversight of AI. The U.S. Is Taking Its Time.
The European Union is applying new legal restraints around artificial intelligence this year. The U.S. is still trying to figure out how far it wants to go.
The European Parliament in December reached a provisional agreement on the world’s first comprehensive legislation to regulate AI, focusing on uses instead of the technology.
The new rules range in severity depending on how risky the application is, with facial recognition and certain medical innovations requiring approval before being made available to customers.
Federal laws specific to AI don’t exist yet in the U.S., and it’s unknown whether that will happen. The EU’s actions, however, could still have a chilling effect on companies based in this country.
