Zuckerberg and Yaccarino on defensive ahead of online child protection hearing

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The chief executives of five of the top social media platforms, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Linda Yaccarino of X, are striking a defensive posture ahead of a Wednesday hearing, where Congress will grill the leaders over their perceived failure to protect children online. 

The hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Capitol Hill is set to tackle growing bipartisan concerns that the social media platforms expose younger users to child predators and groomers, and provide a marketplace for child pornography. It will probably also explore rising fears over a teen mental health crisis that some researchers and politicians have attributed to social media use. 

Several proposed pieces of federal legislation are in train that target the Silicon Valley groups, such as the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to protect children from online harms.

The Senate and the House have so far failed to find consensus on the precise measures that should be taken. Bills such as the Kids Online Safety Act have faced pushback from the tech platforms and the trade groups that represent them. 

In pre-prepared testimony, Meta’s Zuckerberg called for lawmakers to instead mandate regulation requiring Apple and Google app stores to verify the age of younger users, and reiterated the long-standing assertion that the platform has introduced “more than 30” tools and features to protect children. 

“We’re also in favour of setting industry standards on age-appropriate content and limiting signals for advertising to teens to age and location, not behaviour,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the company was “ready to work with any member of this Committee who wants to discuss legislation in these areas”. 

According to her opening testimony, seen by the Financial Times, Yaccarino will insist that X, formerly known as Twitter, is “not the platform of choice for children and teens” and “does not have a line of business dedicated to children”. 

Yaccarino, who took the helm of the Elon Musk-owned platform last year, will also call for more “collaboration” as advancements in artificial intelligence technology improve offenders’ tactics and capabilities, adding: “You have my commitment that X will be part of the solution.” 

But she will also state that the Kids Online Safety Act “should advance, and we will continue to engage on it to ensure it protects free speech”. 

She joins Snap’s Evan Spiegel in breaking rank to give support of the bill. “We support this legislation, not only in word, but in deed,” Spiegel said in written testimony ahead of the hearing.

The platforms are likely to face criticism that they have done too little, too late, amid a flurry of announcements and new policy initiatives in the lead up to the hearing. 

Yaccarino, Spiegel and Jason Citron, head of Discord, were subpoenaed by the committee to attend the long-awaited hearing following “repeated refusals over weeks of negotiations”, according to Senator Dick Durbin, where Zuckerberg and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew voluntarily agreed to testify. 

While Zuckerberg has faced several gruelling hearings before Congress, it will be the first time several of the less experienced Silicon Valley leaders such as Citron and Yaccarino have appeared on the Hill, with the latter likely to have to defend concerns that Musk has cut back moderation resources.

Meta, in particular, has been singled out recently, with the US state of New Mexico filing a lawsuit in December arguing the platform failed to remove child sexual abuse material from across its platforms and was a “prime location for predators”. The accusations followed an undercover months-long investigation in which the attorney-general created “decoy accounts” posing as children aged 14 and under. 

The platform has also come under a Wall Street Journal investigation that found its algorithms facilitated the creation of a network buying and selling underage sex content. Meta said at the time that it has improved its proactive detection of potentially suspicious groups. 

X, meanwhile, faced fresh scrutiny over the weekend after it was forced to block searches for Taylor Swift when sexually explicit images of the pop star created using artificial intelligence proliferated on the platform.