The CEOs of Meta, X/Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and Discord are set to testify January 31 before the U.S. Senate “about their failure to protect children” on social media.
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X/Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, and Discord CEO Jason Citron will testify before the committee in January during a hearing about online child exploitation, the Verge reported.
Snapchat filter selfie / Flickr
TikTok influencers Florin Vitan (L) and Alessia Lanza perform a video for the social network TikTok in the “Defhouse”, a TikTok influencers incubator in Milan, on January 21, 2021. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)
While Zuckerberg and Chew agreed to testify, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) reportedly issued subpoenas for Yaccarino, Spiegel, and Citron after receiving “repeated refusals to appear during several weeks of negotiations.”
“We’ve known from the beginning that our efforts to protect children online would be met with hesitation from Big Tech,” the senators said in a joint statement. “They finally are being forced to acknowledge their failures when it comes to protecting kids. Now that all five companies are cooperating, we look forward to hearing from their CEOs. Parents and kids demand action.”
As Breitbart News reported, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is currently facing a lawsuit from 33 states alleging that the company knowingly allowed and pursued users under the age of 13 on its platforms.
Instagram Reels, which were launched to compete with China’s TikTok, have also been caught offering “risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos” to adult users who follow children, with some of the content even being placed next to advertisements for major companies.
Meanwhile, TikTok is generally known to be harmful to teens and kids, as there exists numerous documented instances in which dangerous “challenges” that have gone viral on the platform have sent kids to the hospital or even resulted in their deaths.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.