Watch: Big tech CEOs testify before Senate Judiciary Committee on child sexual exploitation

this meeting of Senate Judiciary Committee will come to order I thank all those in attendance I want to preface my remarks by saying that I've been in Congress for a few years Senator Graham has well as well if you do not believe this is an idea whose time has come take a look at the turnout here today the Senate Jud dist committee will continue Contin its work on an issue on the mind of most American families how to keep our kids safe from sexual exploitation and harm in the internet age online child sexual exploitation includes the use of online platforms to Target and groom children and the production and endless distribution of child sexual abuse material CES Sam which can haunt victims for their entire lives and in some cases take their lives every everyone here will agree this conduct is abhorent I'd like to turn to a brief video to hear directly from the victims the survivors about the impact these crimes have had on them I was sexually exploited on Facebook I was sexually exploited on Instagram I was sexually exploited on X this is my daughter Olivia this is our son Matthew look at how beautiful Mary is my son Riley died from suicide after being sexually exploited on Facebook the child that gets exploited is never the same ever again I reported this issue numerous times and it took over a decade before anyone helped me you might be able to tell that I am using a green screen why is that in the internet World um my past abusers can contact me fans of my abuse material as a child can find me and contact me as a 17-year-old child I had to write a victim impact statement after being extorted for four consecutive years while I was strong enough to resist sending him any more pictures there were dozens more who were not we got a phone call to find out that my son was in his room and was suicidal he was only 13 years old at the time um him and a friend had been exploited online and trafficked and my son reached out to Twitter Twitter or now X's response was thank you for reaching out we reviewed the content and it didn't find we did not find a violation of our policies so no action will be taken at this time how many more kids like Matthew like Olivia like Riley how many more kids will suffer and die because of social media big Tech failed to protect my child from sexual exploitation big Tech failed to protect me from online sexual exploitation and um we need Congress to do something for our children and protect them it's not too late it's not too late to do something about it online child sexual exploitation is a crisis in America in 2013 the national Center for missing and exploited children known as nickm received approximately 1,380 cyber tips per day by 2023 just 10 years later the number of cyber tips has risen to 100,000 reports a day that's a 100,000 daily reports of child sexual abuse material also known as seesam in recent years we've also seen an explosion in the so-called Financial sex torsion in which a predator uses a fake social media account to trick a minor into sending explicit photos or videos then threatens to release them unless the victim sends money in 2021 Nick Mech received a total of1 139 reports of sex sex tortion 2021 in 2023 through the end of October alone this number skyrocketed to more than 22,000 more than a dozen children have died by suicide after becoming victims of this crime this disturbing growth in child sexual exploitation is driven by one thing changes in technology in 1996 the world's bestselling cell phone was the motor Motorola Star Tech while groundbreaking at the time the clamshell style cell phone wasn't much different from a traditional phone it allowed users to make and receive calls and even receive text messages but that was about it fast forward to today smartphones are in the pockets of seemingly every man woman and teenager on the planet like the star attac today today's smartphones allow users to make and receive calls and text but they can also take photos and videos support live streaming and offer countless apps with the touch of your finger that smartphone that can entertain and inform you can become a back alley where the lives of your children are damaged and destroyed these apps have changed the way we live work and play but as investigations have detailed social media and messaging apps have also given Predators powerful new tools to sexually exploit children your carefully crafted algorithms can be more powerful force on the lives of our children than even the most best intentioned parent Discord has been used to groom abduct and abuse children meta's Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophiles Snapchats disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims Tik Tock has become a quote platform of choice for predators to access engage and groom children for abuse and the prevalence of cam on X has grown as the company has gutted its trust and safety Workforce today we'll hear from the CEOs of those companies they are not only the tech companies that have contributed to this crisis they are responsible for many of the dangers our children face online their design choices their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety their constant pursuit of Engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk coincidentally coincidentally several of these companies implemented Common Sense child safety improvements within the last week days before their CEOs would have to justify their lack of action before this committee but the tech industry alone is not to blame for the situation we're in those of us in Congress need to look in the mirror in 1996 the same year the Motorola Star Tech was flying off shelves and years before social media went mainstream we passed section 230 of the communications decency act this law immunized the then fledgling internet platforms from liability for user generated content interesting only one other industry in America has an immunity from civil liability we'll leave that for another day for the past 30 years section 2 30 has remained largely unchanged allowing big Tech to grow into the most profitable industry in the history of capitalism without fear of liability for unsafe practices that has to change over the past year this committee has unanimously reported five bills that would finally hold tech companies accountable for child sexual exploitation on their platforms unanimous take a look at the composition and membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee and imagine if you will there's anything we could agree on unanimously these five bills were object the object of agreement one of these bills is by Stop Cam act critically it would let victims Su online providers that promote or Aid and abet online child sexual exploitation or that host rest store cesam this stand against online child sex sexual exploitation is bipartisan and absolutely necessary let this hearing be a call to action do we need to get kids online safety legislation to the president's desk I now turn to the ranking member Senator Graham thank you Mr chairman uh the Republicans will answer the call all of us every one of us is ready to work with you and our Democratic colleagues on this committee to prove to the American people while Washington is certainly broken there is a ray of Hope and it is here it lies with your children after years of working on on this issue with you and others I've come to conclude the following social media companies as they are currently designed and operate are dangerous products they're destroying lives threatening democracy itself these companies must be reigned in or the worst is yet to come Gavin Guffy is a representative Republican representative uh from South Carolina in the Rock Hill area to all the victims who came and showed us photos of your loved ones don't quit is working you're making a difference through you we'll get to where we need to go so other people won't have to show a photo of their family the damage to your family has been done hopefully we can take your pain and turn it into something positive so nobody else has to hold up a sign Gavin son got online Instagram and was tricked by a group in Nigeria that put up a young lady posing to be his girlfriend and as things go at that stage in life he gave her some photos uh compromising sexual photos and it turned out that she was part of a extortion group in Nigeria they threatened the young man that if you don't give us money we're going to expose these photos he gave them money but it wasn't enough they kept threatening and he killed himself they threatened Mr Guffy and a son these are bastards by any known definition uh 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 you have a product you have a product product that's killing people when we had cigarettes killing people we did some about it maybe not enough you're going to talk about guns we have the ATF nothing here there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it you can't be sued now Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn who've been like the dynamic duo here have found emails from your company where they warned you about this stuff and you decided not to hire 45 people that could do a better job of policing this so the bottom line is you can't be sued you should be and these emails would be great for punitive damages but the courtrooms closed every American abused by all the companies in front of me of all the people in America we could give blanket liability protection to this would be the last group I would pick it is now time to repeal section 230 this committee has made up of ideologically most different people you could find we've come together through your leadership Mr chairman to pass Five bills to deal with the problem of exploitation of children I'll talk about them uh in depth in a little bit the bottom line is all these bills have met the same fate they go nowhere they leave the committee and they die now there's another approach what do you do with dangerous products you either allow lawsuits you have statutory protections to protect consumers or you have a commission of sorts to regulate the industry in question to take your license away if you have a license toine you none of that exists here we live in an America in 2024 where there is no regulatory body dealing with the most profitable biggest companies in the history of the world they can't be sued and there's not one law on the book that's meaningful protecting the American Consumer other than that we're in a good spot so here's what I think's going to happen I think after this hearing today we're going to put a lot of pressure on our colleagues leadership of the Republican Democratic Senate to let these bills get to the floor and vote and I'm going to go down starting in a couple of weeks make unanimous requests uh unanimous consent request to do cesam do the earn it act do your bill do all the bills and you can be famous come and object I'm going to give you a chance to be famous now Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham have almost nothing in common I promised her I would say that publicly the only thing worse than me doing a bill with L with Warren is her doing a bill with me we have sort of parted that because Elizabeth and I see an abuse here that needs to be dealt with Senator Duran and I have different political philosophy but I appreciate what you've done on this committee youve been a great partner to all of my Democratic colleagues thank you very very much to my Republican colleagues thank you all very very much save the Applause for when we get a result this all talk right now but they'll come a day if we keep pressing to get the right answer for the American people what is that answer accountability now these products have an upside you've enriched our lives in many ways Mr Zuckerberg you created a product I use you the the idea I think when you first came up this be able to talk to your friends and your family and pass on your life to be able to have a place where you could talk to your friends and family about good things going on in life and I use it we all use it there's an upside to everything here but the dark side hasn't been dealt with it's now time to deal with the dark side because people have taken your idea and they've turned it into a nightmare for the American people they've turned it into a nightmare for the World At Large Tick Tock we had a great discussion about how maybe Larry Ellison through Oracle can protect American data from Chinese Communist influence but Tick Tock your representative Israel quit the company because Tik Tock is being used in a way to basically destroy the Jewish State this is not just about individuals I worry that in 2024 our democracy would be attacked again through these platforms by Foreign actors we're exposed and AI is just starting so to my colleagues we're here for a reason this committee has a a history of being tough but also doing things that need to be done this committee has risen to the occasion there's more that we can do but to the m members of this committee let's insist that our colleagues rise to the occasion Also let's make sure that in 118th Congress we have votes that would fix this problem all you can do is cast your vote at the end of the day but you can urge the system to require others to cast their vote Mr chairman I will continue to work with you and everybody on this committee to have a Day of Reckoning on the floor of the United States Senate thank you thank you Senator Graham um today we welcome five witnesses whom I'll introduce him now Jason Citron the CEO of Discord Incorporated Mark Zuckerberg the founder and CEO of meta Evan Spiegel the co co-founder and CEO of snap Incorporated show Chu the CEO of Tik Tock and Linda yakuro the CEO of excorporation formerly known as Twitter I will note for the record that Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Chu are appearing voluntarily I am disappointed that our other Witnesses did not offer that same degree of cooperation Mr Citron Mr Spiegel and Miss yino are here pursuant to subpoenas and Mr Citron only accepted service of his subpoena after US Marshals were sent to discord's headquarters at taxpayers expense I hope this is not a sign of your commitment or lack of commitment to addressing the serious issue before us after I swear in the witnesses witness will have five minutes to make an opening statement then Senators will ask questions in an opening round each of seven minutes I expect to take a short break at some point during questioning to allow the witnesses to stretch their legs if anyone is in need of a break at any point please let my staff know before I turn to the witnesses I'd also like to take a moment to to acknowledge that this hearing has gathered a lot of attention as we expected we have a large audience the largest I've seen in this room today I want to make clear as with other Judiciary Committee hearings we ask people to behave appropriately I know there is high emotion in this room for justifiable reasons but I ask you to please follow the traditions of the committee that means no standing shouting chanting or applauding Witnesses disruptions will not be tolerated anyone who does disrupt the hearing will be asked to leave the Witnesses are here today to address a serious topic we want to hear what they have to say I thank you for your coop operation could all of the witnesses please stand to be sworn in do you affirm the testimony you're about to give before the committee will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God let the record reflect that all the witnesses have answered in the affirmative Mr citrone please proceed with your opening statement good morning morning my name is Jason Citron and and I am the co-founder and CEO of Discord we are an American company with about 800 employees living in working in 33 States today Discord has grown to more than 150 million monthly active users Discord is a communications platform where friends hang out and talk online about shared interests from fantasy sports to writing music to video games I've been playing video games since I was 5 years old and as a kid it's how I had fun and found friendship many of my Fondest Memories Are of playing video games with friends we built Discord so that anyone could build friendships playing video games from Minecraft to Wordle and everything in between games have always brought us together and Discord makes that happen today Discord is one of the many services that have revolutionized how we communicate with each other in the different moments of Our Lives iMessage zoom Gmail and on and on they enrich our lives create communities accelerate Commerce health care and education just like with all technology and tools there are people who exploit and abuse our platforms for immoral and illegal purposes all of us here on the panel today and throughout the tech industry have a solemn and Urgent responsibility to ensure that everyone who uses our platforms is protected from these criminals both online and off Discord has a special responsibility to do that because a lot of our users are young people more than 60% of our active users are between the ages of 13 and 24 it's why safety is built into everything we do it's essential to our mission and our business and most of all this is deeply personal I'm a dad with two kids I want Discord to be a product that they use and love and I want them to be safe on Discord I want them to be proud of me for helping to bring this product to the world that's why I am pleased to be here today to discuss the important topic of the Online safety of miners my written testimony provides a comprehensive overview of our safety programs here are a few examples of how we protect and Empower young people first we've put our money into safety the tech sector has a reputation of larger companies buying smaller ones to increase user numbers and boost Financial results but the largest acquisition we've ever made at Discord was a company called centropy it didn't help us expand our market share or improve our bottom line in fact because it uses AI to help us identify ban and Report criminals and bad behavior it is actually lowered our user count by getting rid of Bad actors second you've heard of endend encryption that blocks anyone including the platform itself from seeing users Communications it's a feature on dozens of platforms but not on Discord that's a choice we've made we don't believe we can fulfill our safety obligations if the text messages of teens are fully encrypted because encryption would block our ability to investigate a serious situation and when appropriate report to law enforcement third we have a zero tolerance policy on child sexual abuse material or cesam we scan images uploaded to Discord to detect and block the sharing of this abor material we've also built an Innovative tool team safety assist that blocks explicit images and helps young people easily report unwelcome conversations we've also developed a new semantic hashing technology for detecting novel forms of cesam called clip and we're sharing this technology with other platforms through the tech Coalition finally we recognize that improving Online safety requires all of us to work together so we partner with nonprofits law enforcement and our colleagues to stay ahead of the curve in protecting young people online we want to be the platform that empowers our users to have better online experiences to build true connections genuine friendships and to have fun Senators I sincerely hope today is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue that results in real improvements in Online safety I look forward to your questions and to helping the committee learn more about Discord thank you Mr Citron Mr Zuckerberg chairman Durban ranking member Graham and members of the committee every day teens and young people do amazing things on our services they use our apps to create new things Express themselves explore the world around them and feel more connected to the people they care about overall teens tell us that this is a positive part of their lives but some face challenges online so we work hard to provide parents and teens support and controls to reduce potential harms being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world technology gives us new ways to communicate with our kids and feel connected to their lives but it can also make parenting more complicated and it's important to me that our services are positive for everyone who uses them we are on the side of parents everywhere working hard to raise their kids over the last eight years we've built more than 30 different tools resources and features that parents can set time limits for their teens using our apps see who they're following or if they report someone for bullying for teens we've had nudges that remind them when they've been using Instagram for a while or if it's getting late and they should go to sleep as well as ways to hide words or people without those people finding out we put special restrictions on teen accounts on Instagram by default accounts for under 16s are set to private have the most restrictive content settings and can't be messaged by adults that they don't follow or people they aren't connected to with so much of our Lives spent on mobile devices and social media it's important to look into the effects on Teen Mental Health and well-being I take this very serious L mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a cause of link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes a recent National of science report evaluated over 300 studies and found that research quote did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent mental health at the population level end quote it also suggested that social media can provide sign ific positive benefits when young people use it to express themselves explore and connect with others still we're going to continue to monitor the research and use it to inform our road map keeping young people safe online has been a challenge since the internet began and as criminals evolve their tactics we have to evolve our defenses too we work closely with law enforcement to find Bad actors and help bring them to justice but the difficult reality is that no matter how much we invest or how effective our tools are there are always more there's always more to learn and more improvements to make but we remain ready to work with members of this committee industry and parents to make the internet safer for everyone I'm proud of the work that our teams do to improve online child safety on our services and across the entire internet we have around 40,000 people overall working on Safety and Security and we've invested more than 20 billion dollar in this since 2016 including around5 billion in the last year alone we have many teams dedicated to child safety and teen wellbeing and we lead the industry in a lot of the areas that we're discussing today we build technology to tackle the worst online risks and share it to help our whole industry get better like project Lantern which helps companies share data about people who break child safety rules and we're founding members of take it down a platform which helps young people prevent their nude images from being spread online we also go beyond legal requirements and use sophisticated technology to proactively discover abusive material and as a result we find and Report more inappropriate content than anyone else in the industry as the national Center for missing and exploited children put it this week meta goes quote above and beyond to make sure that there are no portions of their Network where this type of activity occurs end quote I hope we can have a substantive discussion today that drives improvements across the industry including legislation that delivers what parents say they want a clear system for age verification and control over what apps their kids are using three out of four parents want App Store age verification and four out of five want parental approval of whatever uh whenever teens download apps we support this parents should have the final say on what apps are appropriate for their children and shouldn't have to upload their ID every time that's what app stores are for we also support setting industry standards on age appropriate content and limiting signals for advertising to teens to age and location and not Behavior at the end of the day we want everyone who uses our services to have safe and positive experiences before I wrap up I want to recognize the the families who are here today um who have lost a loved one or lived through some some Terrible Things That No family should have to endure these issues are important for every parent and every platform I'm committed to continuing to work in these areas and I hope we can make progress today thank you thank you Mr Speaker chairman Durban ranking member Graham and members of the committee thank you for convening this hearing and for moving forward important legislation to protect Children online I'm Evan Spiegel the co-founder and CEO of snap we created Snapchat an online service that is used by more than 800 million people worldwide to to communicate with their friends and family I know that many of you have been working to protect Children online since before Snapchat was created and we are grateful for your long-term dedication to this cause and your willingness to work together to help keep our community safe I want to acknowledge the survivors of online harms and the families who are here today who have suffered the loss of a loved one words cannot begin to express the profound sorrow I feel that a service we designed to bring people happiness and joy has been abused to cause harm I want to be clear that we understand our responsibility to keep our community safe I also want to recognize the many families who have worked to raise awareness on these issues pushed for Change and collaborated with lawmakers on important legislation like the Cooper Davis act which can help save lives I started building Snapchat with my co-founder Bobby Murphy when I was 20 years old we designed Snapchat to solve some of the problems that we experienced online when we were teenagers we didn't have an alternative to social media that meant picture shared online were permanent public and subject to popularity metrics it didn't feel very good we built Snapchat differently because we wanted a new way to communicate with our friends that was fast fun and private a picture is worth a thousand words so people communicate with images and videos on Snapchat we don't have public likes or comments when you share your story with friends Snapchat is private by default meaning that people need to opt in to add friends and choose who can contact them when we built Snapchat we chose to have the images and videos sent through our service delete by default unlike prior Generations who've enjoyed like prior Generations who have enjoyed the Privacy afforded by phone calls which aren't recorded Our Generation has benefited from the ability to share moments through snapchat that may not be picture perfect but instead convey emotion without permanence even though Snapchat messages are deleted by default we let everyone know that images and videos can be saved by the recipient when we take action on illegal or potentially harmful content we also retain the evidence for an extended period which allows us to support law enforcement and hold criminals accountable to help prevent the spread of harmful content on Snapchat we approve the content that is recommended on our service using a combination of automated processes and human review we apply our content rules consistently and fairly across all accounts we run samples of our enforcement actions through quality assurance to verify that we are getting it right we also proactively scan for known child sexual abuse material drug rated content and other types of harmful content remove that content content deactivate and device block offending accounts preserve the evidence for law enforcement and Report certain content to the relevant authorities for further action last year we made 690,000 reports to the National Center for missing and exploited children leading to more than 1,000 arrests we also removed 2.2 million pieces of drug rated content and blocked 75,000 Associated accounts even with our strict privacy settings content moderation efforts proactive detection and law enforcement collaboration bad things can still happen when people use online services that's why we believe that people under the age of 13 are not ready to communicate on Snapchat we strongly encourage parents to use the device level parental controls on iPhone and Android we use them in our own household and my wife wife approves every app that our 13-year-old downloads for parents who want more visibility and control we build Family Center and Snapchat where you can view who your teen is talking to review privacy settings and set content limits we have worked for years years with members of the committee on legislation like the kids online safety act and the Cooper Davis act which we are proud to support I want to encourage broader industry support for legislation protecting Children online no legislation is perfect but some rules of the road are better than none much of the work that we do to protect people that use our service would not be possible without the support of our partners across the industry government nonprofit organizations Nos and in particular law enforcement and the First Responders who have committed their lives to helping keep people safe I am profoundly grateful for the extraordinary efforts across our country and around the world to prevent criminals from using online services to perpetrate their crimes I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the opportunities that this country has afforded me and my family I feel a deep obligation to give back and to make a positive difference and I am grateful to be here today as part of this vitally important Democratic process members of the committee I give you my commitment that we will be part of the solution for Online safety we will be honest about our shortcomings and we will work continuously to improve thank you and I look forward to answering your questions thank you Mr Speaker Mr Chu chair Durban ranking member gram and members of the committee I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today my name is show Chu and I'm the CEO of Tik Tok an online community of more than one billion people worldwide including well over 170 million Americans who use our app every month to create to share and to discover now although the average age on Tik Tok in the US is over 30 we recognize that special safeguards are required to protect minors and especially when it comes to combating all forms of cesan as a father of three young children myself I know that the issues that we're discussing today are horrific and the nightmare of every parent I am proud of our efforts to address the threats the young people on online from a commitment to protecting them to our industry-leading policies use of innovative technology and significant ongoing investments in trust and safety to achieve this goal Tik Tok is Vigilant about enforcing its 13 and up age policy and offers an experience for teens that is much more restrictive than you and I would have as adults we make careful product design choices to help make our app inh hitable to those seeking to harm teens let me give you a few examples of long-standing policies that are unique to Tik Tok we didn't do them last week First Direct messaging is not available to any users under the age of 16 second accounts for people under 16 are automatically set to private along with their content furthermore the content cannot be downloaded and will not be recommended to people they do not know third every teen under 18 has a screen time limit automatically automatically set to 60 minutes and fourth only people 18 and above are allowed to use our live stream feature I'm proud to say that Tik Tok was among the first to empower parents to supervise their teens on our app with our family pairing tools this includes setting screen time limits filtering out content from the teens feeds amongst others we made these choices after Consulting with doctors and safety experts who understand the unique stages of teenage development to ensure that we have the appropriate safeguards to prevent harm and minimize risk now safety is one of the core priorities that defines Tik Tok under my leadership we currently have more than 40,000 trust and safety professionals working to protect our community globally and we expect to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety efforts this year alone with a significant part of that in our us operations our robust Community guidelines strictly prohibit content or behavior that puts teenagers at risk of exploitation or other harm and we vigorously enforce them our technology moderates all content uploaded to our app to help quickly identify potential cesam and other material that breaks our rules it automatically removes the content or elevates it to our safety Professionals for further review we also moderate direct messages for cesam and related material and use thirdparty tools like Photo DNA and take it down the combat cam to prevent content from being uploaded to our platform we continually meet with parents teachers and teens in fact I sat down with a group just a few days ago we use their insight to strengthen the protections on our platform and we also work with leading groups like the technology Coalition the steps that we're taking to protect teams are a critical part of our larger trust and safety work as we continue our voluntary and unprecedented efforts to build a safe and secure data environment for us users ensuring that our platform remains free from outside manipulation and implementing safeguards uh on our content recommendation and moderation tools keeping teens safe online requires a collaborative effort as well as collective action we share the committee's concern and commitment to protect young people online and we welcome the opportunity to work with you on legislation to achieve this goal our commitment is ongoing and unwavering because there is no Finish Line when it comes to protecting teams thank you for your time and and consideration today I'm happy to answer your questions thanks Mr jeo chairman Durban ranking member Graham and esteemed members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss ex's work in protecting Miss Yar could you check if your microphone is on um and my talk button is on and you I draw how is that thank you very much adjust my chair apologies start over chairman Durban ranking member Graham and esteemed members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss X's work to protect the safety of minors online today's hearing is titled a crisis which calls for immediate action as a mother this is personal and and I share the sense of urgency X is an entirely new company an indispensable platform for the world and for democracy you have my personal commitment that X will be active and a part of this solution while I joined X only in June of 2023 I bring a history of working together with governments Advocates and NOS to harness the power of media to protect people before I joined I was struck by the leadership steps this new company was taking to protect children X is not the platform of choice for children and teens we do not have a line of business dedicated to children children under the age of 13 are not allowed to open an account less than 1% of the US users on X are between the ages of 13 and 17 and those users are automatically set to a private default setting and cannot accept a message from anyone they do not approve in the last 14 months X has made material changes to protect minors our policy is clear X has zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation my written testimony details X's extensive policies on content or actions that are prohibited and include grooming blackmail and identifying alleged victims of csse we've also strengthened our enforcement with more tools and Technology to prevent those Bad actors from Distributing searching for and engaging with csse content if csse content is posted on X we remove it and now we also remove any account that engages with CSC content whether it is or computer generated last year X suspended 12.4 million accounts for violating our csse policies this is up from 2.3 million accounts that were removed by Twitter in 2022 in 2023 850,000 reports were sent to necmi including our first ever autogenerated report this is eight times more than was reported by Twitter in 2022 we've changed our priorities we've restructured our trust and safety teams to remain strong and agile we are building a trust and safety center of excellence in Austin Texas to to bring more agents inhouse to accelerate our impact we're applying to the technology coalition's project Lantern to make further industrywide progress and impact we've also opened up our algorithms for increased transparency we want America to lead in this solution X commends the senate for passing the report Act and we support the shield act it is time for a federal standard to criminalize the sharing of non-consensual intimate material we need to raise the standards across the entire internet ecosystem especially for those tech companies that are not here today and not stepping up X supports the stop cesam act the kids online safety act should continue to progress and we will support the continuation to engage with it and ensure the protections of the freedom of speech there are two additional areas that require everyone's attention first as the daughter of a police officer la law enforcement must have the critical resources to bring these bad offenders to Justice second with artificial intelligence offenders tactics will continue to sophisticate and evolve industry collaboration is imperative here x believes that the freedom of speech and platform safety can and must coexist we agree that now is the time to act with urgency thank you I look forward to answering your questions thank you very much Miss jarino now we'll go into rounds of questions seven minutes each for the members as well uh I would like to make note of your testimony Michelle Gino I believe you are the first social media company to publicly endorse the cesam act it is our honor chairman that is progress my friends thank you for doing that I'm still going to be asking some probing questions but let me get down to the bottom line here I'm going to focus on my legislation on cesan what it says is civil liability if you intentionally or knowingly host or store child sexual abuse materials or make child sex abuse materials available secondly intentionally or L promote or Aid and abet a violation of child sexual exploitation laws is there anyone here who believes you should not be held civil liable for that type of conduct Mr Citron um good morning chair um you know we very much believe that this content is disgusting and that um there are many things about the stop CM bill that I think are very encouraging and we very much um support adding more resources for the Cyber tip line and and modernizing that along with um giving more resources to nek Mech um and um we're be very U um open to having conversations with you and your team to talk through the details of the bill some more I sure would like to do that because if you intentionally or knowingly host or store cam I think you ought to at least be civil liable I can't imagine anyone who would disagree with that yeah it's disgusting content certainly is that's why we need you supporting this legislation Mr Spiegel I want to tell you I listened closely to your testimony here and it's never been a secret the Snapchat Snapchat is used to send sexually explicit images in 2013 early in your company's history you admitted this in an interview to you remember that interview Senator I don't recall the specific interview you said that when you were first trying to get people on the app you would quote go up to the people and be like hey you should try this application you can send disappearing photos and they would say oh for sexting do you remember that interview Senator when we first created the application it was actually called pikaboo and it the idea was around disappearing images we the feedback we received from people using the app is that they were actually using it to communicate so we changed the name of the application to Snapchat and we found that people were using it to to talk visually as early as 2017 law enforcement identified Snapchat as the pedophiles go-to sexual exploitation tool the case of a 12-year-old girl identified in court only as LW shows the danger over two and a half years a predator sexually groomed her sending her sexually explicit images and videos over Snapchat the man admitted that he only used Snapchat with LW and not any other platforms because he quote knew that chats would go away did you or ever and everyone else at snap really failed to see that the platform was the perfect tool for sexual predators Senator that behavior is disgusting and reprehensible we provide inapp reporting tools so that people who are being harassed or who you know have been shared inappropriate sexual content can report it in the case of harassment or sexual content we typically respond to those reports within 15 minutes so that we can provide help when LW the victim Su Snapchat her case was dismissed under Section 230 of the communications decency act do you have any doubt that had snap faed the prospect of civil liability for facilitating sexual exploitation the company would have implemented even better sa safeguards Senator we already work extensively to proactively detect this type of behavior we make it very difficult for predators to find teens on Snapchat there are no public friends lists no public profil photos uh when we recommend uh friends for uh teens we make sure that they have several mutual friends in common before making that recommendation We Believe those safeguards are important to preventing Predators from misusing our platform Mr Citron according to discord's website it takes a quote proactive and automated approach to safety only on servers with more than 200 members smaller servers rely on server owners and Community moderators to Define and enforce Behavior avior so how do you defend an approach to safety that relies on groups of fewer than 200 sexual predators to report themselves for things like grooming trading a cam or sex tortion um chair our our goal is to is to get all of that content um off of our platform and ideally prevent it um from showing up in the first place or from people engaging in these kind of horrific activities um we deploy a wide array of techniques that work across every surface on our um on Discord um I mentioned we recently um launched something called teen safety assist which works everywhere and it's on by default for teen users that kind of acts like a buddy that um lets them know if they are in a situation or talking with someone that may be inappropriate so they can report that to to us and block that user um so we Mr citrone if that were working we wouldn't be here today sen CH there this is an ongoing challenge for all of us that that is why we're here today um we we do um have 15% of our company is focused on trust and safety of which this is one of our top issues that's more people than we have working on marketing and promoting the company so we we take these issues very seriously but we know it's an ongoing Challenge and I look forward to working with you and collaborating with our our Tech peers and the nonprofits to to improve our approach I certainly hope so Mr Chu your uh organization and business is one of the more popular ones among children can you explain to us what you are doing particularly and whether You' have seen any evidence of cesam in your business yes Senator um we have a strong commitment to invest in trust and safety and as I said in my opening statement I intend to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety this year alone we have 40,000 safety professionals you know working on this topic we have built a specialized child safety team to help us identify specialized issues horrific issues like material like the ones you have mentioned uh if we identify any on our platform and we proactively do do detection we will remove it and we will report them to nickm and other authorities why is it Tik Tock allowing children to be exploited into performing commercialized sex acts uh Senator I respectfully disagree that characterization our live streaming product is not for anyone below the age of 18 we we have taken action to to identify anyone who violates that and we remove them from the from using that service at this point I'm going to turn to my ranking member Senator Graham thank you m uh Mr Citron you said we need to start a discussion uh be honest with you we've been having this discussion for a very long time uh we need to get a result not a discussion do you agree with that um ranking member I I agree this is um an issue that we've also been very focused on since we started our company 2015 but this is the first time are you familiar with the earned act authored by myself and C bloomth um a little bit yes okay or do you support that um we um like yes or no uh we we're not prepared to support it today but we believe you support the seesam ACT um the stop cesam act um we are not prepared to support today do you support the shield act we uh we believe that the Cyber tip line do you support it yes or no uh we we believe that the Cyber tip line and Ne I'll take that to be no the Project SAFE childhood act do you support it um we we believe that I'll take that to be no the report act do you support it um ranking member Graham we very much look forward to having conversations with you and your team we passing the bill that will solve the problem do you support removing section 230 liability protections for social media companies um I believe that section 230 um is is needs to be updated it's a very old law do you do you support repelling it so people can sue if they believe they're harmed um I think that section 230 as written um while it has many downsides has enabled Innovation on the internet which I think has largely been thank you very much so here you are you got if you're waiting on these guys to solve the problem we're gonna die waiting uh Mr Zuckerberg Mr uh try to be respectful here um the representative from South Carolina Mr guffy's son uh got caught up in a sex extortion ring in Nigeria using Instagram he was um shaken down paid money that was enough and he killed himself uh using Instagram what would you like to say to him it's terrible I mean no one should have to go through something like that you think he should be allowed to see you um I I think that they can sue us well I think you should and he can't so the bottom line here folks is that this committee is done with talking we passed five bills unanimously that in their different ways and look at who did this grah Blumenthal Durban Holly cloar cornin cornin cloar Blackburn and oof I mean we've found Common Ground here that just is astonishing and we've had hearing after hearing Mr chairman and the bottom line is I've come to conclude U gentlemen that you're not going to support any of this Linda how do you say your last name Yak Carino uh do you support the earned act on uh we strongly support the collaboration to raise industry practices to do you support do you support the earn in English do you support the earn act yes or no we don't need double speak we look forward to supporting and continue our conversations Okay so but you have but you have you have taken the reason earn Act is important you can actually lose your liability Productions when children are exploited and you didn't use best business practices see the earn it act means you have to earn liability production you're given it no matter what you do so to the members of this committee it is now time to make sure that the people who holding up the signs can sue on behalf of their loved ones nothing will change until the courtroom door is open to victims of social media $2 billion Mr Jew how much what percentage is that of what you made last year Senator it's a significant and increasing investment as a private company we not sh pay tax I mean 2% is what percent of your Revenue uh Senator we're not ready to share our financials and public well I just think $2 billion sounds a lot unless you make a 100 billion so the point is you know when you tell us you're going to spend $2 billion great but how much do you make you know it's all about eyeballs well our goal is to get eyeballs on you and it's just not about children I mean the damage being done do you are you do you realize uh Mr Chu that your tiktock representative in Israel uh resigned yesterday yes I am aware okay and he said I resigned from Tik Tock we're living in a time in which our existence as Jews and Israel and Israel is under attack and in danger uh multiple screenshots taken from Tik tok's internal employee chat platform known as lar show how Tik tocks trust and safety officers celebrate the barbaric acts of Hamas and other Iranian back Terror groups including the hoodies in Yemen Senator I need to make it very clear that pramas content and hate speech is not allowed on with our country why did he resign why did quit Senator we also do not allow any quit do you know why he quit we do not allow this we will investigate my question is he quit I'm sure he had a good job he gave up a good job because thinks your platform is being used to help people who want to destroy the jur state and I'm not saying you want that Mr Zuckerberg I'm not saying you want as an individual any of the harms I am saying that the products you have created with all the upside have a dark side Mr citran I am tired of talking I'm tired of having discussions we all know the answer here and here's the ultimate answer stand behind your product go to the American courtroom and defend your practices 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 I'm a republican who believes in free enterprise but I also believe that every American who's been wronged has to have somebody to go to to complain there's no commission to go to that can punish you there's not one law in the book CA you oppose everything we do and you can't be sued that has to stop folks how do you expect the people in the audience to believe that we're going to help their families if we don't have some system or a combination of systems to hold these people accountable because for all the upside the dark side is too great to live with we do not need to live this way as Americans thank you Senator Graham uh Senator kachar is next she's been quite a leader on the subject uh uh for quite a long time on the shield act and with Senator Corin on the revenge porn legislation Senator clar thank you very much uh chairman Duran and thank you um ranking member Graham uh for those words I couldn't agree more uh for too long uh we have been seeing the social media companies turn a blind eye uh when kids have joined these Platforms in record numbers they have used algorithms that push harmful content because that content got popular theyve provided a venue maybe not knowingly at first but for dealers to sell deadly drugs like fentanyl our own head of our Drug Enforcement Administration has said they basically um been captured by the cartels in Mexico and in China so I strongly support first of all the stop cesam bill I agree with Senator Graham that nothing is going to change unless we open up the courtroom doors I think the time for all of this immunity is done because I think Money Talks even stronger than we talk up here two of the five bills as noted are my bills with Senator Corin one has actually passed through the Senate but is waiting action in the house uh but the other one is The Shield act and I do support uh appreciate those supportive acts of that bill this is about revenge porn uh the FBI director testified before this committee there's been over 20 suicides of kids attributed to online revenge porn in just uh the last year but for those parents out there and those families this is for them about their own child but it's also about making sure this doesn't happen to other children I know because I've talked to these parents parents like Bridget noring from Hastings Minnesota who is out there today Bridget lost her teenage son after he took a fentanyl lace pill that he purchased on the internet Amy Neville is also here platform got the pill Amy Neville is also here her son Alexander was only 14 when he died after taking a pill he didn't know was actually fentanyl we're starting a law enforcement campaign one pill kills in Minnesota going to the schools with the sheriffs and law enforcement but the way to stop it is yes at the border and at the points of Entry but we know that 30% some of the people that are getting the fentanyl are getting it off the platforms meanwhile social media platforms generated 11 billion in Revenue in 2022 from advertising directed at children and teenagers including nearly two billion in ad profits derived from users age 12 and under when a Boeing plane lost a door in mid-flight several weeks ago nobody questioned the decision to ground a fleet of over 700 planes so why aren't we taking the same type of decisive action on the danger of these platforms when we know these kids are dying we have bills that have passed through this incredibly diverse committee when it comes to our political views uh that have passed through this committee and they should go to the floor we should do something finally about liability and then we should turn to some of the other issues uh that number of us have worked on when it comes to uh the uh charges uh for app stores and when it comes um to some of the Monopoly Behavior and the self- preferencing but I'm going to stick with this today facts onethird of fentanyl cases investigated over five months had Direct Tiz to social media that's from the DEA facts between 2012 and 2022 cyber tipline reports of online child sex sexual exploitation increased from 415,000 to more than 32 million and as I noted at least 20 victims committed suicide in sexation cases so I'm going to start with that uh with you Mr Citron uh my bill with Senator Corin The Shield act includes a threat provision that would help protection and accountability um for those that are threatened by these Predators young kids get a picture send it in think they got a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend ruins their life or they think it's going to be ruined and they kill themselves so could you tell me why you're not supporting the shield act uh Senator we we think it's very important that teens have a safe experience um on our platforms um I I think that the um the the the the portion to strengthen law enforcement's ability to investigate crime crimes against children and hold bad doctors accountable is so you holding open that you may support it we very much would would like to have conversations with you we're open to to discussing further we do welcome legislation regulation you know this is a very important issue for our country and um you know we've been prioritizing safety for team than I just I'm much more interested in if you support it because there's been so much talk at these hearings and popcorn throwing and the like and I just want to get this stuff done I'm so tired of this it's been 28 years what since the internet we haven't passed any of these bills because everyone's double talk double talk it's time to actually pass them and the reason they haven't passed is because of the power of your company so let's be really really clear about that so what you say matters your words matter um um Mr Chu I'm a co-sponsor of chair derad stop cesam Act of 2023 along with Senator Holly's the lead Republican I believe uh which among other things empowers victims by making it easier for them to ask Tex companies to remove the material and related imagery from their platforms why would you not support this bill Senator we largely support it I think the spirit of it is very aligned with what we want to do there are questions about implementation that I think companies like us and some other groups have and we look forward to asking those and of course if this legislation is law we will comply um Mr Spiegel I know we talked ahead of time um I do appreciate uh your company support for the Cooper Davis act uh which will finally it's a bill uh with Senator Shaheen and Marshall uh which will allow law enforcement to do more when it comes to fentanyl I think you know what a problem this is Devon noring teenagers from Hastings I mentioned his mom here suffered dental pain and migraine so he bought what he thought was a perco set over snap but instead he bought a counterfeit drug lace with a Leal lethal dose of fentanyl as his mom who's here with us today said all of the hopes and dreams we as parents had for Devon were erased in the blink of an eye and no Mom should have to bury their kit talk about why you support the Cooper Davis act Senator thank you we strongly support the Cooper Davis act and we believe it will help da uh go after the cartels and get more dealers off the streets to save more lives okay are there others that support that bill on this no okay um last um Mr Zuckerberg in 2021 The Wall Street Journal reported on internal meta research documents asking why do we care about tween these were internal documents I'm quoting the documents and answering its own question by citing meta internal emails they are a valuable but untapped audience at a Commerce hearing I'm also on that committee I asked meta's head of global safety why children age 10 to 12 are are so valuable to meta she responded we do not knowingly attempt to recruit people who aren't old enough to use our apps well when the 42 State Attorneys General Democrat and Republican um brought their case uh they said this statement was inaccurate few examples in 2021 she received an email Miss Davis uh from Instagram's research director saying that Instagram is investing and experiencing targeting young age roughly 10 to 12 in a February 2021 instant message one of your employees wrote that meta is working to recruit Jen Alpha before they reach teenage years a 2018 email that circulated inside meta says that you were briefed that children under 13 will be critical for increasing the rate of acquisition when users turn 13 explain that with what I heard at that testimony at the Commerce hearing that they weren't being targeted and I just ask again as the other Witnesses were asked why your company does not support the stop C Sam act or the shield act Sher Senator I'm happy to talk to to both of those we had discussions internally about whether we should build a kids version of Instagram like the kids versions of YouTube and other services um we haven't actually moved forward with that and we currently have no plans to do so so I I I can't speak directly to the exact emails that you that you cited but it sounds to me like they were deliberations around a project that people internally thought was important and we didn't end up moving forward with okay but and the bills what are you going to say about the two bills sure so overall I mean my position on the bills is I I agree with the the the goal of all of them there are most things that I agree with within them there are specific things that I would probably do differently we also have um our own legislative proposal for what we think would be most effective in in terms of helping the the internet um in the various companies uh give parents control over the experience um so I'm happy to go into the detail on any one of them but ultimately I mean I think that this I just again well I think these parents will tell you that that the stuff hasn't worked to just give parents control they don't know what to do it's very very hard and that's why we are coming up with other solutions that we think are much more helpful to law enforcement but also this idea of finally getting something going on liability because I just believe with all the resources you have that you actually would be able to do more than you're doing or these parents would be sitting behind you right now in this Senate hearing room thank you Senator can I speak to that or or do you want me to come back later please go ahead I don't think that parents should have to upload an ID or prove that they're the parent of a of a child in every single app that their children use I think the right place to do this and a place where it would' be actually very easy for it to work is within the app stores themselves where my understanding is Apple and Google already or at least Apple already requires parental consent when a child does a payment with an app so it should be pretty trivial to pass a law that requires them uh to make it so that parents have control anytime a child downloads an app um and and and offers consent of that um and and the research that we've that we've done shows that the vast majority of parents want that um and I think that that's the type of of of legislation in addition to some of the other ideas that you all have that would make this a lot easier for parents I just just to be clear I remember one mom telling me with all these things she could maybe do that she can't figure out it's like a fet overflowing in a sink and she's out there with a mop while her kids are getting addicted to more and more different apps and being exposed to material we've got to make this simpler for parents so they can protect their kids and I just don't think this is going to be the way to do it I I think the answer is what Senator Graham has been talking about which is opening up the halls of the courtroom um so that puts it on you guys to protect these parents and protect these kids and then also to pass some of these laws that makes it easier for law enforcement thank you Senator cloar uh we're going to try to stick to the seven minute rule didn't work very well but uh we're gonna I'll try to give additional time on the other side as well Senator Corin there's no question that your platforms are very popular um but we know that U while here in the United States we have an open society and a free exchange of information that there are authoritarian governments there are criminals who will use your platforms for the sale of drugs for sex for extortion and the like and um Mr Chu I think your company is uh unique among the ones represented here today because of its uh ownership uh by bite dance a Chinese company and I know there have been some steps that you've taken uh to uh wall off the data collected here in the United States but the fact of the matter is that under Chinese law and Chinese National Intelligence laws all information accumulated by companies in the People's Republic of China are required to be shared with the Chinese intelligence Services um bite dance uh the initial release of Tik Tock I understand was 2016 uh these efforts that you made with Oracle under the so-called project Texas to wall off the US data was in 2021 and apparently allegedly fully walled off in March of 23 what happened to all of the data that Tik Tock collected before that Senator thank you from from American users understand um Tik Tok is owned by B Dan which is majority owned by Global Investors and we have three Americans on the board out of five um you are right in pointing out that over the last three years we have spent billions of dollars building out project taxes which is a plan that is unprecedented in our industry the wall of firewall of protected us data from the rest of our staff and I'm asking about all of the data that you collected prior to that that event uh yes Senator we have started a data deletion plan I talked about this a year ago we have finished the first phase of data deletion through our data centers outside of the Oracle Cloud infrastructure and we're beginning phase two where we will not only delete from the data centers we will hire a third party to verify that work and then we will go into you know for example employees uh working laptops to delete that as well was all of the data collected by Tick Tock prior to project Texas shared with the Chinese government pursuant to the National Intelligence laws is that country Senator we have not been asked for any data by the Chinese government and we have never provided it your company is unique again among the uh the ones represented here today because you're currently undergoing review by the committee on foreign investment in the United States is that correct Senator yes there are ongoing discussions uh and a lot of our project Texas work is informed by the your the discussions with many agencies Under the cyphus Umbrella well cifas is designed specifically to review foreign investments in the United States for National Security risks correct yes I believe so and your company is currently being reviewed by this inter agency Committee of the at the treasury Department for potential National Security risks Senator this uh review is on a acquisition of musically which is an acquisition that was done many years ago I mean is this a casual conversation or are you actually uh providing information to the treasury Department about your how your your platform operates um for evaluating a potential National Security risk Senator it's been uh many years across two Administrations and a lot of discussions around how our plans are how our systems work uh we have a lot a lot of robust discussions about a lot of detail 63% of teens I understand use Tik Tock is that sound about right I Senator I cannot verify that we know we are popular amongst many age groups the average age in the US today for our user base is over 30 but we're aware we are popular and uh you reside in Singapore with your family correct yes I have I reside in Singapore and I work here in the United States as well and do your children have access to Tik Tok in Singapore Senator uh if they lived in the United States I would give them access to under 13 experience my children are below the age of 13 my question is in Singapore do they have access to Tik Tok or is that restricted by by uh domestic law uh we do not have an under 13 experience in Singapore we have that in the United States because we were deem a mix audience app and uh we we created under 13 experience in response to that a Wall Street Journal article published yesterday directly contradicts what your company has stated publicly um according to the journal employees under the project Texas say that us user data including user emails birth date IP addresses continue to be shared with bite dance staff again owned by a Chinese company do you dispute that yes Senator there are many things about that article they are inaccurate where it gets right is that this is a voluntary uh project that we built we spend billions of dollars there are thousands of employees involved and it's very difficult because it's unprecedented why is why is it important that uh the data collected from us users be stored in the United States uh Senator this uh was a project we built in response to some of the concerns that were raised by members of this committee and others and that was because of concerns that the data that was stored in China could be accessed by the uh Chinese Communist Party by according to the National Intelligence laws correct Senator we are not the only company that does business uh uh you know that has Chinese employees for example we're not even the only company in this room room that hires Chinese Nationals but in order to address some of these concerns we have moved the data into the Oracle Cloud infrastructure we built a 2,000 person team to oversee the management of the data based here we fed walled it off from the rest of the organization and then we open it up to third parties like Oracle and we will on board others to give them third party validation this is unprecedented exess I I think we are unique in taking even more steps to protect user data in the United States well you've disputed the Wall Street Journal story published yesterday um are you going to conduct any sort of Investigation to see whether there's any truth to uh to the allegations made in the article or are you just going to dismiss them outright oh we're not going to dismiss them so we have ongoing security inspections not only by our own Personnel but also by Third parties to ensure that the system is rigorous and robust no system that we any one of us can build is perfect but what we need to do is to make sure that we are always improving it and testing it against against bad people who may try to bypass it and if anyone breaks our policies within our organization we will take disciplinary action against them thanks Senator Corin Senator Coons thank you chairman Durban um first I'd like to start by thanking all the families that are here today all the parents who are here because of a child they have lost all the families that are here because you want us to see you and to know your concern conern you have contacted each of us in our offices expressing your grief your loss your passion and your concern and the audience that is watching can't see this they can see you the witnesses from the companies but this room is packed as far as the eye can see and when this hearing began many of you picked up and held pictures of your beloved and lost children I benefit from and participate in social media as do many members of the committee and our nation and our world there are now a majority of people on Earth participating in and in many ways benefiting from one of the platforms you have launched or you lead or you represent and we have to recognize there are some real positives to social media it has transformed Modern Life but it has also had huge impacts on families on children on Nations and there's a whole series of bills championed by members of this committee that tries to deal with the traffic ing in illicit drugs the trafficking in illicit child sexual material the things that are facilitated on your platforms that may lead to self harm or suicide so we've heard from several of the leaders on this committee the chair and ranking and very talented and experienced Senators the frame that we are looking at this is consumer protection when there is some new technology we put in place regulations to make sure that it is not overly harmful as my friend Senator kashar pointed out one door flew off of one plane no one was hurt and yet the entire Boeing Fleet of that type of plane was grounded and a federal fit for-purpose agency did an immediate safety review I'm going to point not to the other pieces of legislation that I think are urgent that we take up and pass but to the core question of transparency if you're a manufacturing a product that is allegedly addictive and harmful one of the first things we look to is safety information we try to give our constituents our consumers warnings labels that help them understand what are the consequences of this product and how to use it safely or not as you've heard pointedly from some of my colleagues if you sell an addictive defective harmful product in this country in violation of regulations and warnings you get sued and what is distinct about platforms as an industry is most of the families who are here are here because there were not sufficient warnings and they cannot effectively sue you so let me dig in for a moment if I can because each of your companies voluntarily discloses information about the content and the safety Investments you make and the actions you take there was a question pressed I think it was by Senator Graham earlier about um Tik Tock I believe Mr Chu you said invest $2 billion in safety my background memo said your Global revenue is 85 billion dollar Mr Zuckerberg my background memo says you're investing five billion in safety and meta and your annual revenue is on the order of 116 billion so what matters you can hear some expressions from the parents in the audience what matters is the relative numbers and the absolute numbers your data folks if there's anybody in this world who understand data it's you guys so I want to walk through whether or not these voluntary measures of disclosure of content and harm are sufficient because I would argue we're here because they're not without better information how can policy makers know whether the protections you've testified about the new initiatives the starting programs the monitoring and the takedowns are actually working how can we understand meaningfully how big these problems are without measuring and Reporting data Mr Zuckerberg your testimony referenced a National Academy of Sciences study that said at the population level there is no proof about harm for mental health well it may not be at the population level but I'm looking at a room full of hundreds of parents who have lost children and our challenge is to take the data and to make good decisions about protecting families and children from harm so let me ask about what your companies do or don't report and I'm going to particularly focus on your content policies around self harm and suicide and I'm just going to ask a series of yes or no questions and what I'm getting at is do you disclose enough Mr Zuckerberg from your policies prohibiting content about suicide or self harm do you report an estimate of the total amount of content not a percentage of the overall not a prevalence number but the total amount of content on your platform that violates this policy and do you report the total number of views that self harm or suicide promoting content that violates this policy gets on your platform yes Senator we um we pioneered a quarterly reporting on our community standards enforcement across all these different categories of harmful content we focus on prevalence which you you uh mentioned because what we're focused on is what percent of the content that we take down so zuer I'm interrupt and you're very talented I have very little time left I'm trying to get an answer to a question not as a percentage of the total because remember it's a huge number so the percentage is small but do you report the actual amount of content and the amount of views self harm content received no I believe we focus on prevalence correct you don't Miss yarina yes or no you report it or you don't Senator what as a reminder we have less than 1% of our users that are between the ages of 13 and 17 do you report the absolute number of how many images and how posts and accounts that we've taken down in 2023 we've taken over almost a million posts down that in regards to mental health and self Mr Chu do you disclose the number of appearances of these types of content and how many are viewed before they're taken down Senator we disclose the number we take down based on each category um of violation and how many of that were taken down proactively before it was reported Mr sple yes Senator we do disclose Mr citen yes we do so I've got three more questions I'd love to walk through if I had unlimited time I will submit them for the record the larger point is that platforms need to hand over more content about how the algorithms work what the content does and what the consequences are not at the aggregate not at the population level but the actual numbers of cases so we can understand the content in closing Mr chairman I have a bipartisan Bill the platform accountability and transparency act co-sponsored by Senators Corin clovar Blumenthal on this committee and Senator Cassidy and others it's in front of the commer committee not this committee but it would set reasonable standards for disclosure and transparency to make sure that we're doing our jobs based on data yes there's a lot of emotion in this field understandably but if we're going to legislate responsibly about the management of the content on your platforms we need to have better data is there any one of you willing to say now that you support this bill Mr chairman let the record reflect a yawning Silence from the leaders of the social media platforms thank you thanks Senator Coons we're on one of two the first of two roll calls and so U please understand if some of the members leave and come back it's no disrespect they're doing their job Senator Lee thank you Mr chairman tragically survivals survivors of uh of sexual abuse are often repeatedly victimized and revictimized over and over and over again by having uh non-consensual images of themselves U on social media platforms there's a nickm study uh that pointed out there was um one instance um of Cam that reappeared more than 490,000 times after it had been reported after it been reported so we need tools in order to deal with this we need uh frankly laws in order to mandate standards so that this doesn't happen so that we have a systematic way of getting rid of this stuff because there there there is literally no plausible justification uh no way of defending this uh uh one tool one that I think would be particularly effective is a a bill that I'll be introducing uh later today and I invite all my committee members to join me it's called the protect act the protect act would in perent part require websites to verify age and verify that they've received consent of any and all individuals appearing on their site in pornographic images and it also require platforms to have meaningful processes for an individual seeking to have uh images of him or herself removed in a timely manner uh Miss Yaro based on your understanding of existing law what might it take for a person to have those images remove say from x i Senator Lee thank you it sounds like uh what you're going to introduce into law in terms of ecosystem-wide and user consent sounds exactly like part of the philosophy of why we're uh supporting the shield act and no one should have to endure non-consensual images being shared online yeah and W without that without laws in place it and it's fantastic anytime a company um as as as you've described with yours wants to take those steps it's very helpful it can take a lot longer than it should and sometimes it does to the point where somebody had images U shared uh 490,000 times after it was reported to the authorities and that's deeply concerning um but yes uh the project act would work in tandem with it's a good compliment to the shield act um Mr Zucker bir let's turn to you next as you know I I feel strongly about privacy and believe that one of the best protections uh for an individual's privacy online involves end to end encryption we also know that a great deal of grooming and sharing of cesam happens to occur uh on endtoend encrypted systems tell me does does meta allow juvenile accounts on its platforms to use encrypted messaging services within those apps Sorry Senator what do you mean juvenile uh underage people under 18 under 18 um we we allow people under the age of 18 to use WhatsApp and and we do allow that to be encrypted yes do you have a a bottom level age at which they're not allowed to use it I yeah I don't I don't think we allow people under the age of 13 yeah um what about you Mr Citron uh on Discord do you have um do you allow kids to have accounts to access encrypted messaging um Discord is not allowed to be used by children under the age of 13 and we do not use endend encryption for text messages you know we believe that it's very important to be able to respond to well form law law enforcement requests um to uh and we're also working on proactively Building Technology we working with a nonprofit called Thorn to build a grooming classifier so that our teen safety assist feature can actually identify these conversations if they might be happening so we can intervene and um give those teens tools to get out of that situation or or potentially even report those conversations and those people to law enforcement and an encryption as as much as it can prove useful elsewhere it can be harmful especially if you're on a site where you know children are being groomed and exploited if you allow children onto an end to end encryption um enabled app uh that can prove problematic now uh let's go back to you for a moment Mr Zuckerberg Instagram recently announced that it's going to restrict all teenagers from access to uh eating disorder material suicidal idation themed material self harm content and that's fantastic uh that's great um what's what's odd what what I'm trying to understand is is why it is that Instagram is um only restricting it's it's restricting access to to uh sexually explicit content but only for teens ages 13 to 15 U why not restrict it for 16 and 17 year olds as well uh Senator my understanding is that we don't allow sexually explicit content on on the service for people of any age um the the um how was that going uh you know our our uh our prevalence metrics suggests that I think it's 99% or so of the content that we remove were able to identify automatically using AI systems so I think that our efforts in this while they're not perfect I think are industry-leading um the the other thing that you asked about was um self harm content which is what we recently restricted and we made that shift the the um I think the state of the science is shifting a bit previously we believed um that when people were thinking about self harm it was important for them to be able to express that and get support and now more of the the the thinking in the field is that it's just better to not show that content at all which is why we recently moved to restrict that from showing up for uh for for those teens at all okay is there a way for uh for parents to make a request on what their kid can see or not see on your sites um there are a lot of parental controls uh I I'm not sure if they're I I don't think that we currently have a control around topics but we do allow parents to control um the time that the children are on the site and also a lot of it is based on kind of monitoring and understanding what the the teens experience is what they're interacting with Mr CIT Discord allows pornography on its site now reportedly 17% of minors who use Discord has have had online sexual interactions on your platform 177% and 10% uh have those interactions with someone that the minor believed uh to be an adult do you restrict miners from um from accessing Discord servers that host pornographic material on them uh Senator yes we we do restrict monance from accessing content that is marked for adults um Discord also does not recommend content to people Discord is a chat app we do not have a feed or an algorithm that boosts content um so we allow adults to share content with other adults in adult labeled spaces and we do not allow teens to access that content okay I see my time's expired thank you welcome everyone we are uh here in this hearing um because as a collective your platforms really suck at policing themselves we hear about it here in Congress with fenel and other drug dealing facilitated across platforms we see it and hear about it here in congress with harassment and bullying that takes place across your platforms we see it and hear about it here in congress with respect to child pornography sex exploitation and blackmail and we are sick of it it seems to me that there is a problem with accountability because these conditions continue to persist in my view section 230 which provides immunity from lawsuit is a very significant part of that problem if you look at where bullies have been brought to he heal recently whether it's Dominion finally getting Justice against Fox News after a long campaign to try to discredit the election equipment manufacturer or whether it's the moms and dads of the Sandy Hook victims finally getting Justice against Infowars in its campaign of trying to get people to believe that the massacre of their children was a fake put on by them or even now more recently with a writer getting a very significant judgment against Donald Trump after years of bullying and defamation an honest courtroom has proven to be the place where these things get sorted out and I'll just describe one case if I may it's called doe versus Twitter the plaintiff in that case was blackmailed in 2017 for sexually explicit photos and videos of himself then aged 13 to 14 a compilation video of multiple cam videos uh surfaced on Twitter in 2019 a concerned citizen reported that video on December 25th 2019 Christmas Day Twitter took no action the plaintiff then a minor in high school in 2019 became aware of this video from his classmates in January of 2020 you're a high school kid and suddenly there's that that's a day that's hard to recover from ultimately he became suicidal he and his parents contacted law enforcement and Twitter to have these videos removed on January 21st and again on January 22nd of 2020 and Twitter ultimately took down the video on January 30th 2020 once federal law enforcement got involved that's a pretty foul set of facts and when the family sued Twitter for all those months of refusing to take down the explicit video of this child Twitter invoked section 230 and the District Court ruled that the claim was Bor there is nothing about that set of facts that tells me that section 230 performed any public service in that regard I would like to see very substantial adjustments to section 230 so that the honest courtroom which brought relief and Justice to egene Carol after months of defamation which brought silence peace and Justice to the parents of the Sandy Hook children after months of defamation and bullying by infow Wars and Alex Jones and which brought significant Justice and an end to the campaign of defamation by Fox News to a little company that was busy just making election machines so I would uh my time is running out I'll turn to uh I guess Senator Cruz is next but I would like to have each of your companies put in writing what exemptions from the protection of section 230 you would be willing to accept bearing in mind mind the fact situation in do versus Twitter bearing in mind the enormous harm that was done to that young person and that family by the nonresponsiveness of this enormous platform over months and months and months and months again think of what it's like to be a high school kid and have that stuff up in the public domain and have the company that is holding it out there in the public domain react so disinterestedly okay will you put that down in writing for me one two three four five yeses done Senator Cruz thank you Mr chairman social media is a very powerful tool but we're here because every parent I know and I think every parent in America is terrified about the garbage that is directed at our kids I have two teenagers at home and the phones they have are portals to predators to viciousness to bullying to self harm and each of your companies could do a lot more to prevent it Mr Zuckerberg and June of 2023 The Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram's recommendation systems were actively connecting pedophiles to accounts that were advertising the sale of child sexual abuse material in many cases those accounts appear to be run by underage children themselves often using Code words and emojis to advertise elicit material in other cases the accounts included indicia that the victim was being sex trafficked I know that Instagram has a team that works to prevent the abuse and exploitation of Children online but what was particularly concerning about the Wall Street Journal expose was the degree to which Instagram's own algorithm was promoting the discoverability of victims for pedophiles seeking child abuse material in other words this material was n't just living on the dark corners of Instagram Instagram was helping pedophiles find it by promoting graphic hashtags including hash pedor and hash Preen sex to potential buyers Instagram also displayed the following warning screen to individuals who were searching for child abuse material the these results may contain images of child sexual abuse and then you gave users two choices get resources or see results anyway Mr Zuckerberg what the hell were you [Music] thinking all right Senator um the the the basic science behind that is that when people are searching for something that is problematic it's often helpful to rather than just blocking it to help direct them towards something that um that could be helpful for getting them to get help in what I understand get resources in what sane universe is there a link for C results anyway well because we might be wrong we we try to trigger this this uh warning or we tried to um when we think that there's any chance that the results you might be wrong let me ask you how many times was this wording screen displayed I don't know but the but the you don't know why don't you know I I I don't know the answer that off the top of my head but well you know what Mr Zuckerberg it's interesting you say you don't know it off the top of your head because I asked it in June of 2023 in an overlight oversight letter and your company refused to answer will you commit right now to within 5 days answering this question for this committee we'll follow up on that is that a yes not a will follow up I know how Loy write statements saying we're not going to answer will you tell us how many times this warning screen was displayed yes or no Senator I'll personally look into it I'm not sure if we have okay so you're refusing to answer that let me ask you this how many times did an Instagram user who got this warning that you're seeing images of child sexual abuse how many times did that user click on see results anyway I want to see that Senator I'm not sure if we stored that but I'll personally look into this and we'll follow up after and what followup up did Instagram do when you have a potential pedophile clicking on I'd like to see child porn what did you do next when that happened Senator I I think that an important piece of context here is that any context that we think is child sexual Zucker that's called a question what did you do next when someone clicked you may be getting child sexual abuse images and they click see results anyway what was your next step you said you might be wrong did anyone examine was it in fact child sexual abuse material did anyone report that user did anyone go and try to protect that child what did you do next Senator we take down anything that we think is sexual abuse material on the service and we do did anyone verify whether it was in fact child sexual abuse material Senator I don't know if if every single search result we're following up on but report the people who wanted it do you want me to answer your question I want you to answer the question I'm asking did you report the people who click see results anyway um that's probably one of the factors that we use in reporting and in general we've reported more people and done more reports like this to Nicki the national Center of missing exploited children than any other company in the industry we proactively go out of our way across our services to do this and have made I think it's more than 26 million reports which is more than the whole rest of the industry can so Mr Zucker zuer your company and every social media company needs to do much more to protect children all right Mr Chu in the next couple of minutes I have I want to turn to you you familiar with China's 2017 National Intelligence law which states quote all organizations and citizens shall support assist and cooperate with National Intelligence efforts in accordance with the law and shall protect National Intelligence work Secrets they are aware of yes I'm familiar with this Tik Tock is owned by bite dance is bite dance subject to the law for the Chinese businesses that b dance owns yes it will be subject to this but Tik Tok is not available in mainland China and Senator as we talked about in your office we built project Texas to put this Out Of Reach so so bite dance is subject to the law now under this law which says shall protect National Intelligence work Secrets they are aware of it compels people subject to the law to lie to protect those Secrets is that correct I cannot comment on that um what I said again is that we because you have to protect those Secrets no Senator we Tik Tok is not available in mainland China we have moved the data into an americanu is controlled by bite dance which is subject to this law now you said earlier you said and I wrote this down we have not been asked for any data by the Chinese government and we have never provided it I'm going to tell you and I told this when you and I met last week in my office I do not believe you and I'll tell you the American people don't either if you look at what is on Tik Tok in China you are promoting to kids science and math videos educational videos and you limit the amount of time kids can be on Tik Tok in the United States you are promoting to kids self harm videos an anti-israel propaganda why is there such a dramatic difference Senator that is just not accurate uh there is there's not a difference between what kids see in China and what kids see here Senator Tik Tok is not available in China is a separate experience there what I'm saying but you you have a a company that is essentially the same except it promotes beneficial materials instead of harmful materials that is not true we have a lot of Science and Math content here on Tik Tok there so much of it stand let me let me Point let me point to this Mr Chu there there was a report recently uh that that compared hashtags on Instagram to hashtags on Tik Tac Tik Tok and what trended and the differences Were Striking so for something like hash Taylor Swift or hash Trump researchers found roughly two Instagram post for everyone on Tik Tok that's not a dramatic difference that difference dra jumps to 8 to1 for the hash weager and it jumps to 30 to1 for the hash Tibet and it jumps to 57 to1 to the hash tianan square and it jumps to 174 to1 for the hash Hong Kong protest why is it that on Instagram people can put up a a hash Hong Kong protest 174 times compared to Tik Tok What censorship is Tik Tok doing at the request of the Chinese government n Senator that analysis is FL the analysis is flawed has been debound by other external sources like the KO Institute fundamentally a few things happen here not all videos carry hashtags that's the first thing the second thing is that you cannot selectively choose a few words within a certain time difference between Taylor Swift and tianan square what happened in tanan square Senator there was a massive protest during in in during that time but what I'm trying to say is our users can freely come and post this why would there be no difference on Taylor Swift or a minimal difference and a massive difference on T and square or Hong Kong Senator could you wrap up please Senator our algorithm does not suppress any content simply based on answer that question why is there a difference like I said I think this analysis is flawed you're selectively choosing some words over some periods we haven't been around this there an obvious difference 174 to1 for Hong Kong compared to Taylor Swift is dramatic Senator blumire thanks Mr chairman Mr Zuckerberg lenthal I'm sorry thank you I know both of them that was good enough Mr Zuckerberg uh you know who Antony Davis is correct yes she's one of your top leaders in September of 2021 she was Global head of safety correct yes and you know that she came before a subcommittee of the Commerce Committee that I chaired at the time subcommittee on consumer protection correct yes and she was testifying on behalf of Facebook right meta but yes it was then Facebook but meta now and she told us and I'm quoting Facebook is committed to building better products for young people and to doing everything we can to protect their privacy safety and well-being on our platforms and she also said kids safety is an area where quote we are investing heavily end quote we now know that statement was untrue we know it from an internal email that we have received it's an email written by Nick CLE you know who he is correct yes he was met as president of global Affairs and and he wrote a memo to you which you received correct uh it was written to you so I can't I can't see the email but sure I'll assume that that you got it that correct and he summarized Facebook's problems he said quote we are not on track to succeed for our core well-being topics problematic use bullying and harassment connection and SSI meaning suicidal self-injury he said also in a another memo quote we need to do more and we are being held back by a lack of investment this memo has the date of August 28th just weeks before that testimony from and Tiggy Davis correct sorry Senator I'm not sure what the date of the testimony was well those are the dates on the emails Nick CLE was asking you pleading with you for resources to back up the narrative to fulfill the commitments in effect Antony Davis was making promises that Nick CLE was trying to fulfill and you rejected that request for 45 to 84 Engineers to do well-being or safety we know that you rejected it from another memo Nick C's assistant Tim curn who Nick did email Mark referring to that earlier email to emphasize his support for the package but it lost out to the various other pressures and priorities we've done a calculation that those potentially 84 Engineers would have cost meta about 50 million dollar in a quarter when it earned 9.2 billion dollars and yet it failed to make that commitment in real terms and you rejected that request because of other pressures and priorities that is an example from your own internal document of failing to act and it is the reason why we can no longer trust meta and frankly any of the other social media to in effect grade their own homework the public and particularly the parents in this room know that we can no longer rely on social media to provide the kind of safeguards that children and parents deserve and that is the reason why passing the kids online safety act is so critically important important Mr Zuckerberg do you believe that you have a constitutional right to lie to Congress senator no but I I mean bunch of things I'd like the opportunity clarify for you in a lawsuit brought by hundreds of parents some In This Very Room alleging that you made false and misleading statements concerning the safety of your platform for children you argued in not just one pleading but twice in December and then in January that you have a constitutional right to lie to Congress do you disavow that filing in court Senator I don't know what filing you're talking about but I testify honestly and truthfully and I I would like the the opportunity to respond to the previous things that you showed as well well I have a few more questions and let me ask uh others who are here uh because I think it's important to put you on record who will support the kids online safety act yes or no Mr citan um there are parts of the of the act that we think are great no it's a yes or no question I'm going to be running out of time so I'm assuming the answer is no if you can't answer yes uh we we very much think that the national privacy stand would be great Mr seagull Senator we strongly support the kids online safety act and we've already implemented many of its core Provisions thank you I welcome that support along with Microsoft support Mr Chu Senator with some changes we can support it in its present form do you support it yes or no we are aware that some groups have raised some concerns is important to understand I'll take that as a Noe Mr Yak Miss yakar Senator we support kosum will continue to make sure that it accelerates and make sure it continues to offer Community for teens that are seeking that voice Mr Zuckerberg uh Senator we support the age appropriate content standards but would um have some suggests how to Mr Zuckerberg do you support the kids online safety act me these are these are Nu public and I'm just asking whether you'll support it or not these are nuanced things I think that the basic spirit is right I think the basic ideas in it are right and there are some ideas that I would debate how to best unfortunately I don't think we can count on social media as a group or big Tech to support this measure and in the past we know it's been opposed by armies of lawyers and lobbyists we're prepared for this fight but I am very very glad that we have parents here because tomorrow we're going to have an advocacy day and the folks who really count the people in this room who support this measure are going to be going to their representatives and their senators and their voices and faces are going to make a difference Senator Schumer has committed that he will work with me to bring this bill to a vote and then we will have real protection for children and parents online thank you Mr chairman thank you Senator Blumenthal uh we have a vote on as Senator cotton have you voted on on and Senator Holly you haven't voted yet you're next and I I don't know how long the vote will be open but I'll turn over to you thank you Mr chairman Mr Zuckerberg let me start with you did I hear you say in your opening statement that there's no link between mental health and social media use Senator what I said is I think it's important to look at the science I know it's people widely talk about this as if that is something that that's already been proven and I think that the bulk of the scientific evidence does not support that well really let let me just remind you of some of the science from your own company Instagram studied the effect of your platform on teenagers let me just read you some quotes from The Wall Street journal's report on this company researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of teenagers most notably teenage girls here's a quote from your own study quote we make body image issues worse for one in Three teen girls here's another quote teens blamed Instagram this is your study for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression this reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups that's your study Senator we try to understand the uh the feedback and and how people feel about the services we can improve a minute your own your own study says that you make life worse for one in three teenage girls you increase anxiety and depression that's what it says and you're here testifying to us in public that there's no link you've been doing this for years for years you've been coming in public and testifying under oath that there's absolutely no link your product is wonderful the science is nent Full Speed Ahead while internally you know full well your product is a disaster for teenagers and yet you keep right on doing what you're doing right that's not true that's not true let me let me let me show you some other facts I know that you're familiar with minute wait a minute wait a minute that's not a question that's not a question those are facts Mr Zuckerberg that's not a question those aren't facts let me show you some more facts here are some here's some information from a whistleblower who came before the Senate testified under oath in public he worked for you it's a senior executive here's what he showed he found when he studied your products so for example this is girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years old 37% of them reported that they had been exposed to nudity on the platform unwanted in the last 7 Days 24 per said that they had experienced unwanted sexual advances they' had been propositioned in the last 7 Days 177% said they had encountered self harm content pushed at them in the last seven days now I know you're familiar with these stats because he sent you an email where he lined it all out I mean we've got a copy of it right here my question is who did you fire for this who got fired because of that Senator we study all this because it's important and we want to improve our services well you just told me a second ago you studied it but that there was no linkage who did you fire I said you misar 37% of teenage girls between 13 and 15 were exposed to unwanted nudity in a week on Instagram you knew about it who did you fire Senator this is why we're building all did you tools Senator that's I don't think that that's who did you fire I'm not going to answer that um that's you didn't fire anybody right you didn't take sign it's appropriate to talk about like IND decisions do you know who's sitting behind you you've got families from across the nation whose children are either severely harmed or gone and you don't think it's appropriate to take a talk about steps that you took the fact that you didn't fire a single person let me ask you this let me ask you this have you compensated any of the victims sorry have you compensated any of the victims these girls have you compensated them I don't believe so you why not don't you think they deserve some compensation for what your platform has done help with counseling services help with dealing with the issues that your your service has caused our our job is to make sure that we build tools to help keep people safe are you going to compensate them Senator our job and what we take seriously is making sure that we build industry-leading tools to find harmful cont take it off the services to make money and to build tools that Empower parents didn't take any action you didn't take any action you didn't fire anybody you haven't compensated a single victim let me ask you this let me ask you this there's families of victims here today have you apologized to the victims I would you like to do so now well they're here you're on National Television would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product show them the pictures would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people I'm sorry everything you terrible no one should have to go through the things that your families have have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to uh to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer you know why Mr Zuckerberg why should your company not be sued for this why is it that you can claim you hide behind a liability Shield you can't be held accountable shouldn't you be held accountable personally will you take personal responsibility Senator I I think I've already answered this I mean this is these try again will you take personal responsibility Senator I view my job and the job of our company is building the best tools that we can to keep our community safe well you're failing at that well Senator we're doing an industry-leading effort we build AI tool nonsense your product is killing people will you personally commit to compensating the victims you're a billionaire will you commit to compensating the victims will you set up a compensation fund with your money I think these are these are Mone Senator these are complicated no that's not a complicated question though that's yes or no will you set up a victim's compensation fund with your money the money you made on these families sitting behind you yes or no Senator I don't think that that's my job is to make good tools my my job is to make sure that your job is to be responsible for what your company has done you've made billions of dollars on the people sitting behind them are you here you've done nothing to help them you've done nothing to compensate them you've done nothing to put it right you could do so here today and you should you should Mr Zuckerberg before my time expires Mr Chu let me just ask you your platform why should your platform not be banned in the United States of America you are owned by a Chinese Communist company or a company based in China the editorinchief of your parent company is a Communist Party secretary your company has been surveilling Americans for years according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal Tik Tock meetings china-based employees of your company have repeatedly accessed non-public data of United States citizens your company has tracked journalists improperly gaining access to their IP addresses user data in an attempt to identify whether they're writing negative stories about you why should your your platform is basically an Espionage arm for the Chinese Communist party why should you not be banned in the United States of America Senator I disagree with your characterization many of what you have said we have explained in a lot of detail Tik Tok is is used by 170 million Americans I know every single one of those Americans are in danger from the fact that you track their keystrokes you track their app usage you track their location data and we know that all of that information can be accessed by Chinese and employees who are subject to the dict taxs of the Chinese Communist party why should you not be banned in this in this country Senator that is not accurate a lot of what you describe we collect we don't it is 100% accurate do you deny that repeatedly Americans data has been accessed by bite dance employees in China we built a project that you know cost us billions of dollars to stop that and we have made a lot of progress and it hasn't been stopped according to the Wall Street Journal report from just yesterday even now bite dance workers without going through official channels have access to the private information of American citizens I'm quoting from the article private information of American citizens including their birth date their IP address and more that's now Senator as we know the media doesn't always get it right what what we have what we have the Chinese Communist Party does I'm not saying that what I'm saying is that we have been we spent billions of dollars to build this project is rigorous it's robust it's unprecedented and I'm proud of the work that the 2,000 employees are doing to protect the it's not it's not protected that's the problem Mr Chu it's not protected at all it's subject to communist Chinese party inspection and review your app unlike anybody else sitting here and heaven knows I've got problems with everybody here but your app unlike any of those is subject to the control and inspection of a foreign hostile government that has actively trying to track the information and whereabouts of every American they get their hands on your app ought to be banned in the United States of America for the security of this country thank you Mr chairman Senator hono thank you Mr chairman um as we've heard children face all sorts of dangers when they use social media from mental health harms to sexual exploitation even trafficking sex trafficking is a serious problem in my home state of Hawaii especially for native Hawaiian victims that social media platforms are being used to facilitate this trafficking as well as the creation and distort distribution of ccam is deeply concerning but it's happening for example several years ago a military police officer stationed in Hawaii was sentenced to 15 years in prison for producing c-cam as part of his online exploitation of a minor female he began communicating with this 12-year-old girl through Instagram he then used Snapchat to send her sexually explicit photos and to solicit such photos from her he later used these photos to blackmail her and just last month the FBI arrested a Neo-Nazi cult leader in Hawaii who lured victims to his Discord server he used that server to share images of extremely disturbing child sex sexual abuse material interspersed with Neo-Nazi imagery members of his child exploitation and Hate group are also present on Instagram Snapchat X and Tik Tok all of which they use to recruit potential members and victims in many cases including the ones I just mentioned your companies played a role in helping law enforcement investigate these offenders but by the time of the investigation so much damage had already been done this hearing is about how to keep children safe online and we've listened to all of your testimony to seeing ly uh impressive safeguards for young users you try to limit the time that they spend you require parental consent do you have all of these tools yet trafficking and exploitation of miners online and on your platforms continues to be rampant nearly all of your companies make your money through advertising specifically by selling the attention of your users your product is your users as a MAA product designer wrote in an email quote young ones are the best ones you want to bring people to your service young and ear early end quote in other words hook them early research published last month by Harvard School of Public Health estimates that snap makes an astounding 41% of its revenues by addressing to users under 18 with Tik Tock it's 35% seven of the 10 largest Discord servers attracting many paying users are for games used primarily by teens by children all this is to say that social media companies yours and others make money by attracting kids to your platforms but insuring safety doesn't make money it costs money if you are going to continue to attract kids to your platform forms you have an obligation to ensure they are safe on their platforms because the current situation is untenable that is why we're having this hearing but to ensure safety for our children that costs money your companies cannot continue to profit off young users only to look the other way when those users our children are harmed online we've had a a lot of comments about section 230 protections and I think we are definitely heading in that direction and some of the five bills that we have already passed out of this committee talks about limiting the the the liability protections for you last November this is for Mr zugerberg last November the the Privacy technology subcommittee heard testimony from uro bear in response to one of my questions about how to ensure the social media companies focus more on child safety he said he said and I and I am paraphrasing a little bit Mr bear said what will change their behavior is at the moment that Mark Zuckerberg declares earnings and these are these earnings have to be declared to the SEC so he has to say last quarter we made $34 billion and the next thing he has to say is how many teens experienced unwanted sexual advances on its platform Mr Zucker Zuckerberg will you commit to reporting measurable child safety data on your quarterly earnings reports and calls Senator it's a it's a good question we actually already have a quarterly report that we issue and do a call to answer questions for how we're enforcing our community standards that includes not just the Child Safety um issues and metrics is that a yes we we have a separate call that we do this on but we've led the think that you know you you have to report your earnings to the SEC will you report to them this kind of uh data and by numbers by the way because Senator said and others have said percentages don't really tell the full story will you report to the SEC the number of teens and sometimes you don't even know where the their teens or not because they just claim to be adults will you report the number of underage children on your platforms who experience unwanted cm and other kinds of uh uh messaging that they that harm them will you commit to citing those numbers to the SEC when you make your quarterly report well Senator I'm not sure it would make as much sense to include in the SEC filing but we file it publicly so that way everyone can see this and we I'd be happy toile up and talk about what specific metrics I think the specific things that some of the ones that you just mentioned around underage people on our services we don't allow people under the age of 13 on our service so if we find anyone who's under the age of 13 we remove them from our service now I'm not saying that people don't lie and that there aren't anyone who's under the age of 13 who's using it but I'm not going to be able to we're not going to be able to count how many people there are because fundamentally if we identify that someone is underage we remove them from I think that's really important that we get actual numbers because these are real human beings that's why all these parents and others are here because each time that a person a young person is exposed to this kind of unwanted material and they get hooked it is a danger to that individual so I'm hoping that you are saying that you do report this kind of information to if not the SEC that it is made public I think I'm hearing that yes you do so yeah Senator I think we report more publicly on our enforcement than any other company in the industry and we're very supportive of transparency measures I running out of time Mr Zuckerberg but so um I I will follow up with what what exactly it is that you do report again for you when meta automatically places young people's accounts and you testify to this on the most restrictive privacy and content sensitivity sessions and yet teens are able to opt out of these safe cards isn't that right it's not mandatory that they remain on these uh settings they can opt out Senator yes we we we default teens into a private account so that way they have a private and restricted experience but some teens want to be creators and want to have content that they share more broadly and I don't think that that's something that should just blanketly be banned why not I think I think it should be mandatory that they not that they remain on on the more restrictive settings I think there's I mean a lot of teens create amazing things and I think with the right supervision and and and and parenting and and controls I think that that's like I don't think that that's the type of thing that you want to just not allow anyone to be able to do I think you want to make it so that my time my time is up but I I have to say that there is an argument that you all make for every single thing that we are proposing and I I share the the concern that I have about the blanket limitation on liabilities that we provide all of you and I think that that has to change and that is on us on Congress to make that change thank you Mr chair chman thank you Senator Rono Senator cut Mr CH let's cut straight to the chase is Tik Tok under the influence of the Chinese Communist party no Senator we are private business okay so you can see that your parent bite dance is subject to the 2017 National Security Law which requires Chinese companies to turn over information to the uh Chinese government and conceal it from the rest of the world you con seeed that correct Sen um the Chinese question you can see it it early any company that does any Global business that does business in China has to follow their local laws isn't it the case that bite dance also has an internal Chinese Communist Party Committee like I said all businesses that operate in China have to follow their local law so your parent company is subject to the national security law that requires it to answer the party it has its own internal Chinese Communist Party Committee you answer to that parent company but you expect us to believe that you're not under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party party I understand this concern Senator which is why we built it was a yes or no okay but you used to work for bite dance didn't you you were the CFO for bite dance that is correct senator in April 2021 while you were the CFO the Chinese Communist party's China and internet investment fund purchased a 1% stake in bite Dan's Main Chinese subsidiary the bite Dan technology company in return for that so-called 1% golden shair the party took one of three board seats at that sub subsidiary company that's correct isn't it it's for the Chinese business um is that correct it's for the Chinese business that deal was finalized on April 30th 20121 isn't it true that you were appointed the CEO of Tik Tok the very next day on May 1 2021 well this a it's a coincidence it's a coincidence that you were the CFO that the Chinese Communist party took its golden share in its board seat and the very next day you were appointed the CEO of Tik Tok that's a hell of a coincidence it really is Senator yeah it is okay and before uh bite dance you at a Chinese company called XI is that correct uh yes I used to work around the world where did where did you live when you worked at XI I lived in China many where exactly in Beijing in China how many years did you live in Beijing Senator I worked there for about five years so you lived there for five years yes isn't it the case that XI was sanctioned by the United States government in 2021 for being a communist Chinese military company I'm here to talk about Tik Tok I think I think they then had a lawsuit and it was overturned I I can't remember the another Biden Administration that reversed those sanctions just like by the way they revers the terrorist designation on the hooti hooes in Yemen how's that working out for them but it was sanctioned as a Chinese Communist military company so you said today as you often say that you live in Singapore of what nation are you a citizen Singapore are you a citizen of any other Nation no Zen have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship Sen I serve my nation in Singapore no I did not do you have a Singaporean passport yes and I served my military for two and a half years ining do you have any other do you have any other passports from any other Nation no sen your wife is an American citizen your children are American citizens that's correct have you ever applied for American citizenship not no not yet okay have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party Senor I'm Singaporean no have you ever been Associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party no Senator again I'm Singaporean let me ask you some hopefully simple questions you said earlier in response to your question that what happened at tin Square in June of 1989 was a massive protest did anything else happen in tan Square yes I think it's well documented there was a massacre there was an indiscriminate Slaughter of hundreds or thousands of Chinese citizens do you agree with the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the weager people Senator I've said this before I think it's really important that anyone who cares about this topic or any topic can freely Express it's a very simple question that unites both parties in our country and governments around the world is the Chinese government committing genocide against the weager people Senator anyone including you know you can come and I'm asking you you are a worldly Cosmopolitan well educated man who's expressed many opinions on many topics is the Chinese government committing genocide against the weager people actually Senator I talk amazingly about my company and I'm here to talk about what does yes or no you're here you're here to give testimony that's truthful and honest and complete let me ask you this Joe Biden last year said that xianping was a dictator do you agree with Joe Biden is Xin ping a dictator Senator I'm not going to comment on any world leaders what what why won't you answer these very simple questions Senator it's not appropriate for me as a businessman to come in and world leaders are you scared that you'll lose your job if you say anything about negative about the Chinese Communist party I disagree that you will find content that is critical China on next time you go on are you scared that you'll be arrested and disappear the next time you go to Mainland China Senator I you will find content as critical of China and any other country freely on Tik Tok okay okay let's let let's turn to what Tik Tock a tool of the Chinese Communist party is doing to America's youth does the uh does the name Mason Eden ring a bell uh Senator you may have to give me more specifics if you don't mind yeah he was a 16-year-old or Kanon after a break up in 2022 he went on your platform and searched for things like inspirational quotes and positive affirmations instead he was served up numerous videos glamorizing suicide until he killed himself by gun what about the name Chase NASA is that ring a bell would you mind giving me more details please he was a 16-year-old who saw more than a thousand videos on your platform about violence and suicide until he took his own life by stepping in front of a plane or train are you aware that his parents Dean and Michelle are suing Tick Tock and bite dance for pushing their son to take his own life uh yes I'm aware of that okay finally Mr Chu um has the Federal Trade Commission sued Tick Tock during the Biden Administration uh Senator I cannot talk about whether there's any are you being are you currently being sued by the Federal Trade Commission Senator I cannot talk about any potential lawsuit I say potential actual are you being sued by the Federal Trade Commission Senator I think I've given you my answer I can talk no Miss jino's company is being sued believe Mr Zuckerberg's company is being sued I believe yet Tik Tock the agent of the Chinese Communist party is not being sued by the Biden Administration are you familiar with a the name Christina kafara you may have to give me more details Christina kafara was a paid adviser to bite dance your communist influenced parent company she was in hired by the Biden FTC to advise on how to sue Mr Zuckerberg's company Senator B is a global company and not a Chinese Communist Company by GL investors public reports indicate that your lobbyist visited the White House more than 40 times in 2022 how many times did your company visit did your company's lobbyist visit the White House last year I I don't know that Senator are you are you aware that the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee is on your platform they have Tik Tok accounts Senator we encourage people to come on to by wayon let them they won't let their staffers use their personal phones they give them separate phones that they only use Tik Tok on we encourage everyone to join including yourself Senator so all these companies are being sued by the FTC you're not the FTC has a former paid advisor your parent talking about how they can sue Mr Zuckerberg's company Joe Biden's re-election campaign the Democratic National Committee is on your platform let me ask you have you or anyone else at Tik Tok communicated with or coordinated with the Biden Administration the Biden campaign or the Democratic National Committee to influence the flow of information on your platform we work with uh anyone any creators who want to use our campaign it's all the same um process okay so what we have here we have a company that's a tool of the Chinese Communist party that is poisoning the minds of America's children in some Cas is driving them to suicide and that at best the Biden Administration is taking a pass on at worst may be in collaboration with thank you Mr chw thank you Senator cotton so we're going to take a break now we're on the second roll call members can take advantage of that they wish the break will last about 10 minutes please do your best to return Senate Judiciary Committee will resume we have nine Senators who have not uh asked questions yet in seven minute rounds and we'll uh turn first to Senator Pia thank you Mr chair um colleagues as we reconvene uh I'm proud once again to uh uh share that I am one of the few senors with younger children uh and I lead with that because as we are having this conversation today uh it's not lost on me that uh between my children who are all now in the teen and pre-teen category uh and their friends uh I see this issue very up close and personal um and in that spirit I want to take take a second to just acknowledge and thank all the parents who are in the audience today many of whom have shared their stories with our offices and I credit them uh for um finding strength through their suffering through their struggle and channeling that into the advocacy that is making a difference I thinkk all of you um now I appreciate again personally the challenges that parents and caretakers uh School personnel and others face in helping our young people navigate this uh world of social media and technology in general now the services our children are growing up with uh provide them unrivaled access to information I mean this is beyond what previous generations uh have experienced and that includes learning opportunities socialization and much much more but we also clearly have a lot of work to do to better protect our children from the Predators and preditory behavior that these technologies have enabled and yes Mr Zuckerberg that includes exacerbating the Mental Health crisis in America nearly all teens we know have access to uh smartphones and the internet uh and use the internet daily and while Guardians do have primary responsibility for caring for our children the old address says uh it takes a village uh and so society as a whole including leaders in the tech industry must prioritize the health and safety of our children now dive into my questions now and be specific platform by platform Witness by witness on the topic of some of the parental tools you have each made reference to Mr citen how many miners are on Discord and how many of them have caretakers that have adopted your family center tool and if you don't have the numbers just say that quickly and uh provide that to our office uh we can follow up with you on that how have you ensured that young people in their Gardians are aware of the tools that you offer um we make it very clear to use to to teens on our platform what tools are available and our teen safet is enabled by specifically do you do what that what may be clear to you is not clear to the general public so what do you do in your opinion to make it very clear so our teen safety assist which is a feature that um helps uh teens keep themselves safe in addition to blocking and blurring images that may be sent to them that is on by default for teen accounts and it cannot be turned off we also have we we market and to our uh teen users directly in our platform we launched our family center we created a promotional video we put it directly in our product so in every um open the app in fact every user opened the app they got an alert like hey Discord has this um they want you to use it thank you look forward to the the data that we're requesting for Mr Zuckerberg across all of meta services from Instagram Facebook messenger and Horizon uh how many miners use your applications and of those minors how many have a caretaker that has adopted the parental supervision tools that you offered sorry I can follow up with the specific stats on that okay it would be very helpful not just for us to know but for you to know as a leader of your company uh and how same question how are you ensuring that uh young people and their Gardens are aware of the tools that you offer uh we run pretty extensive ad campaigns both on our platforms and outside we work with creators and organizations like Girl Scouts to make sure that this is broadly a that there's broad awareness of the tools okay Mr spel how many minors use Snapchat and of those minors how many have caretakers that are registered with your family center Senator I believe approximately uh in the United States there are approximately 20 million uh Teenage users of Snapchat I believe approximately 200,000 parents use Family Center and about 400,000 teens have linked their account to their parents using Family Center so 200,000 400,000 sounds like a big number but small in percentage of the miners using SnapChat uh what are you doing to ensure that young people in their gardiens are aware of the tools you offer Senator we uh create a banner for Family Center on the user profile so that accounts we believe maybe of the age that they could be parents can see uh the the entry point into Family Center easily okay uh Mr Chu how many minors are on Tik Tok and how many of them have a caregiver that uses your family tools Senator I need to get back to you on the specific numbers um but we were one of the first platforms to give what we call Family pairing uh to parents you go to settings you turn on a QR code your teenager's QR code and yours you scan it and what it allows you to do is you can set screen time limits you can um filter out some keywords you can turn on the more restricted mode and we're always talking to parents um I met a you know a group of parents and teenagers and high school teachers last week to talk about what more we can provide in the family pairing mode Miss jarino how many miners use x and are you planning to implement safety measures or guidance for caretakers like uh your pure companies have thank you Senator less than 1% of all us users are between the ages of 13 and 17 less than 1% of how many many of 90 million us users okay so still hundreds of thousands continue yes yes and every single one is very important uh being a 14-month-old company we have reprioritized child protection and safety measures and we have just begun to talk about and discuss how we can enhance those with parental controls let me uh continue with the followup question for um Mr Citron in addition to keeping parents informed about the nature of various internet services there's a lot more we obviously need to do for today's purposes while many companies offer a broad range of quote unquote user empowerment tools it's helpful to understand whether young people even find these tools helpful so appreciate you sharing your teen safety assist and the tools and how you're advertising it but have you conducted any assessments uh of how these features are impacting minor use of your platform um Our intention is to is to give teens tools capabilities that they can use to keep themselves safe and also so our teams can help keep teens safe um we recently launched teen safety assist last year and we I I do not have um a study off the top of my head but we'd be happy to follow up with you on that okay uh my time is up I'll have followup questions for each of you either in the second round or through statements for the record on a a similar assessment of the tools that you've proposed thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Pia Senator Kennedy thank you all for being here uh Mr Spiegel I see you hiding down there what does y yada y mean I'm not familiar with the term Senator very uncool can we agree that what you do not what you say what you do is what you believe and everything else is just cottage [Music] cheese yes Senator you agree with that speak up don't be shy I I I've listened to to you today I've heard a lot of yachty Y ying and I've heard you talk about the reforms you've made and I appreciate them and I've heard you talk about the reforms you're going to make but I don't think you're going to solve the problem I think Congress is going to have to help you I think the reforms you're talking about to some extent are going to be like putting putting paint on rotten wood and I'm not sure you're going to support this legislation I'm not um the the fact is that you and some of your internet colleagues who are not here are no longer you're you're not companies your countries you're you're very very powerful and you and some of your colleagues who are not here have blocked everything we have tried to do in terms of reasonable regulation everything from privacy to child exploitation and um in fact we we have a new definition of recession um a recession is when we know we're in a recession when Google has to lay off 25 members of Congress that's what we're down to we're also down to this fact that your platforms are hurting children I'm not saying they're not doing some good things but they're hurting children and I know how to count votes and if this bill comes to the flooor of the United States Senate it will pass what we're going to have to do and I say this with all the respect I can muster is convinced my good friend Senator Schumer to to go to Amazon buy a spine online and bring this bill to the senate floor and uh the house will then pass it now that's that's one person's opinion I may be wrong but I doubt it uh Mr Zuckerberg let me ask you a couple of questions let's I might wax a little philosophical here um I have to hand it to you uh you you have um you have convinced over two billion people to give up all of their personal information information every bit of it in exchange for getting to see what their high school friends had for dinner Saturday night that's pretty much your business model isn't it it's not how I would characterize it and we give people the ability to connect with the people they care about and um and to engage with the topics that they care about and you and you take this information this abundant of personal information and then you develop algorithms to punch people's hot buttons which and send and and steer to them information that punches their 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 f for the truth hasn't it I mean Senator I disagree with that that characterization um you know we build ranking and recommendations because people have a lot of friends and a lot of interests and they want to make sure that they see the content that's relevant to them um we're trying to make a product that's useful to people and and make our services um as helpful as possible for people to connect with the people they care about and the interests they care about but you don't show them both sides you don't give them balanced information you just keep punching their hot buttons punching their hot buttons you don't show them balanced information so people can discern the truth for themselves and and you rev them up so much that that so often your platform and others becomes just cess pools of snark where nobody learns anything don't they well Senator I disagree with that I think people can engage in the things that they're they're interested in um and learn quite a bit about those we have done a a handful of different experiments and things in the past around news and trying to show content on you know diverse set of of of perspectives I think that there's more that needs to be explored there but I don't think that we can solve that by ourselves one of the things that I saw you think I'm sorry to cut you off Mr Mr President but I'm G to run out of time do do you think your users really understand what they're giving to you all their personal information and how you how you process it and how you monetize it do you think people really understand uh Senator I think people understand the basic terms I mean I think that there's I actually think that a lot of people let put another way we've spent a couple years since we talked about this does your user agreement still suck I I'm I'm not sure how to answer that CER can you still have can you still have a dead body and all that legal ease where nobody can find it Senator I'm not I'm not quite sure what you're referring to but I think people get the basic deal of using these Services it's a free service you're using it to connect with the people you care about if you share something with people other people will be able to see your information it's it's inherently you know if you're putting something out there to be shared publicly um or with a private set of people it's you know you're inherently putting it out there so I think people get that basic but but Mr Zuckerberg you're in the foothills of creepy you you try you track you track people who aren't even Facebook users you track your own people your own users who are your product even even when they're not on Facebook I I'm I mean I'm I'm going to land This Plane pretty quickly Mr chairman I I I mean it's creepy and I understand you make a lot of money doing it but I just wonder if if our technology is greater than our Humanity I mean let me ask you this final question Instagram is harmful to young people isn't it Senator I disagree with that that's not what the research shows on balance that doesn't mean that individual people don't have issues and that there aren't things that that we need to do to to help provide the right tools for people but across all the research that we've done internally I mean this this the uh you know survey that uh the senator previously cited um you know there are 12 or 15 different categories of harm that we asked um teens if they felt that Instagram made it worse or better and across all of them except for the one that that that um that Senator Holly cited um more people said that using Instagram issu that they face either positive or let we're just going have to agree to disagree if if you believe that Instagram I know it's I'm not saying it's intentional but if you agree that Instagram if you think that Instagram is not hurting millions of our young people particularly young teens particularly young women you shouldn't be driving it is thanks Senator Butler thank you Mr chair and um thank you to um our panelist who've come to uh have an important conversation with us most importantly I want to appreciate the families uh who have uh shown up to continue to be remarkable um champions of your children and your loved ones for um being here and in particular two California families um that I was able to just talk to on on the break the families of Sammy Chapman from Los Angeles and Daniel perta uh from Santa Clarita uh they are are here today and are doing some incredible work uh to not just protect the memory and Legacy of their boys um but the work that they're doing is going to protect my nine-year-old uh and that is uh indeed why we're here there are a couple questions that I want to ask um some individuals let me start with a question for each of you uh Mr Citron have you ever sat with a family and talked about their experience and what they need from your product yes or no uh yes I have spoken with parents about how we can build tools to help them Mr Spiegel have you sat with families and young people to talk about your products and what they need from your product yes Senator Mr Shu yes I just did it two weeks ago for example I don't want to know what you did for the hearing prep Mr Chu I just wanted to know anything in terms of Prov designing the product that you are are creating Mr Zuckerberg um have you sat with parents and young people to talk about how you design product uh for uh your constit for your uh consumers yes over the years I've had a lot of conversations with parents you know that's interesting Mr Zuckerberg because we talked about this last night and you gave me a very different answer I asked you this very question well I I told you that I wasn't that I didn't know what specific processes our company had no Mr Zuckerberg you said to me that you had not I I must have misspoke I I want to give you the room to missp misspeak Mr Zuckerberg but I asked you this very question I asked all of you this question uh and you told me a very different answer when we spoke but I won't belabor it can I um a number of you have talked about the I'm our ex uh Miss sharino have you talked to parents directly young people about designing your product I as a new leader of EX dancers yes I've spoken to them about the behavioral patterns e because less than 1% of our users are in that age group but yes I have spoken to them thank you ma'am Mr spiegle um there are a number of parents who uh children have been able to actually access uh illegal drugs on your platform what do you say to those parents well Senator we are devastated that we cannot to the parents what do you say to those parents Mr Spiel I'm so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies we work very hard to block all Search terms related to drugs from our platform we proactively look for and detect drug rated content we remove it from our platform preserve it as evidence we and then we refer it to law enforcement for Action we've worked together with nonprofits and with families on education campaigns because the scale of the fenel epidemic is extraordinary over 100,000 people lost their lives last year and we believe people need to know that one pill can kill that campaign reached more than 200 was viewed more than 260 million times on Snapchat we also speaker there are two fathers in this room who lost their sons they're 16 years old their children were able to get those pills from Snapchat I know that there are statistics and I know that there are good efforts none of those efforts are keeping our kids from getting access to those drugs on your platform uh as uh California company all of you I've talked with you about what it means to be a good neighbor and what California families and American families should be expecting from you you owe them more than just a a set of Statistics uh and I look forward to you showing up on all pieces of this legislation all of you showing up on all pieces of legislation to keep our children safe Mr Zuckerberg I want to come back to you I um talked with you about being a a parent to a young child um who's doesn't have a phone doesn't you know is not on social media at all um and one of the things that I am deeply concerned with uh as uh a parent to a young black girl is the utilization of uh filters on your platform that would suggest to young girls utilizing your platform the evidence that they are not good enough as they are I want to ask more specifically and refer to some unredacted Court doc documents that reveal that your own researchers uh concluded that these face filters that mimic plastic surgery negatively impact youth mental health indeed uh and well-being why should we believe why should we believe that because that you're going to do more to protect young women and young girls when it is that you give them the tools to affirm the self-hate that is spewed across your platforms why is it that we should believe that you are committed to doing anything more to keep our children safe sorry there's a lot to unpack there people tools to express themselves in different ways and people use face filters and different tools to make media and photos and videos that are fun or interesting um across a lot of the different products that that that that plastic surgery pins are good tools tools to express creativity um Senator I'm not speaking to that skin lightening tools are tools to express creativity this is the direct thing that I'm asking I'm not defending any specific one of those I think that the ability to kind of filter and um and edit images is generally a useful tool for expression for that specifically I'm not familiar with the study that you're referring to but we did make it so that we not recommending this type of content to teams I made no no reference to a study to court documents that reveal your knowledge of the impact of these types of filters on young people generally young girls in particular I disagree with that characterization I I think that there's been hyp documents I I'm I haven't seen any document okay M Mr Zuckerberg my my time is up um I hope that you hear he what is being offered to you and are prepared to step up and do better I know this senate committee uh is going to do our work to hold you in great to Greater account thank you Mr chair Senator Tillis thank you Mr chair thank you all for being here the um I I don't feel like I'm G to have an opportunity to ask a lot of questions so I'm going to reserve the right to submit some for the record but I I have heard we've had had hearings like this before I've been in the senate for nine years I've heard hearings like this before I've heard horrible stories about uh people who have died committed suicide uh been embarrassed um every year we have an annual flogging every year and what materially has occurred over the last nine years um do any of you all do just yeser no question do any of y'all participate in an industry Consortium trying to make this fundamentally safe across platforms yes or no Mr zuberg there's a variety of organizations partipate which organizations I should say does anyone here not participate in an industry if I I actually think it would be a moral for you all to consider it a strategic advantage to keep safe or to keep private something that would secure all these platforms to avoid this sort of pro do you all agree with that that anybody that would be saying you want ours because ours is the safest and these haven't figured out the secret sauce that you as an industry realize this is an existential threat to you all if we don't get it right right I mean you've you've got to secure your platforms you got to deal with this do do you not have an inherent mandate to do this because it would seem to me if you don't you're going to cease to exist I mean we could regulate you out of business if we wanted to and and the reason I'm saying it may sound like a criticism it's not a criticism I think we have to understand that there should be an inherent motivation for you to get this right our Congress will make a decision that could potentially put you out of business here's the reason I have a concern with that though I I just went on the internet uh while I was listening intently to all the other members speaking and I found a dozen different uh platforms outside the United States 10 of which are in China two of which are in in Russia uh their daily average subscribe or active membership numbers in the billions well people say you can't get on China's version of Tik Tok I took me one quick search on my favorite search engine to find out exactly how I could get a an account on this platform today um and so the other thing that we have to keep in mind I come from technology I could figure out ladies and gentlemen I could figure out how to influence your kid without them ever being on a social media platform I can randomly send text and get a bite and then find out an email address and get compromising information um if we're it is horrible to hear some of these stories and I have shared the and I've had these stories occur in my hometown down in North Carolina but if we only come here and make a point today and don't start focusing on making a difference which requires people to stop shouting and start listening and start passing l anguage here the Bad actors are just going to be off our Shores I have another question for you all how much do how many people roughly if you don't know the exact numbers okay roughly how many people do you have looking 24 hours a day at these horrible images and just go real quick with an answer down the line and filtering it out um it's it's most of the 40,000 about people who work on safety again we have 2300 people all over the world okay we have 40,000 trust and safety professionals around the world we have approximately 2,000 people dedicated to trust and safety and content moderation um our our platform is much much smaller than these folks we have hundreds of people and it's um looking at content in 15% of our work I've only mentioned these people are have a horrible job many of them experience um they they have to get counseling for all the things they see we have evil people out there and we're not going to fix this by shouting past or talking past each other we're going to fix this by every one of y'all being at the table and hopefully coming closer to what I heard one person say supporting a lot of the good bills like one that I hope Senator Blackburn mentions when she gets a chance to talk but guys if you're not at the table in securing these platforms you're going to be on it and and and the reason why I'm not okay with that is that if we ultimately destroy your ability to create value and drive you out of business the evil people will find another way to get to these children and I do have to admit I don't think my mom's watching this one but there is good we we can't look past good that is occurring my mom who lives in Nashville Tennessee and I talked yesterday and we talked about a Facebook post that she made a couple of days ago we don't let her T to anybody else that that that connects my 92y old mother with uh with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren that lets a kid who may feel awkward in school to get into a group of people and relate to people let let's not thr throw out the good because we haven't all together focused on rooting out the bad now I guarantee you I could go through some of your governance documents and find a reason to fog every single one of you because you didn't place the emphasis on it that I think you should but at the end of the day I F it find it hard to believe that any of you people started this business some of you in your college dorm rooms for the purposes of creating the evil that is being perpetrated on your platforms but I hope hope that every single waking hour you're doing everything you can to reduce it you're not going to be able to eliminate it and I hope that there are some enterprising young tech people out there today that are going to go to parents and say ladies and gentlemen your children have a deadly weapon they have a potentially deadly weapon whether it's a phone or a tablet you have to secure it you can't assume that they're going to be honest and say that they're 16 when they're 12 uh we all have to recognize that we have a responsibility to play and you guys are at the tip of the spear so I hope that we can get to a point to where we are moving these bills if you got a problem with them State your problem let's fix it no is not an answer uh and and know that I want the United States to be the beacon for Innovation to be the beacon for safety and to prevent prevent people from using other options that have existed since the internet has existed to exploit people and Count Me In as somebody that will try and help out thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Tillis next is Senator oof thank you Mr chairman and uh thank you to our Witnesses today uh Mr Zuckerberg I want to begin by just asking a simple question which is do you want kids to use your platform more or less well we don't want people under the age of 13 using you want teenagers 13 and up to use your platform more or less um well we would like to build a product that is useful and that people want to use more my time is is going to be limited so it's just do you want them to use it more or less teenagers 13 to 17 years old do you want them using meta products more or less I'd like them to be useful enough that they want to use them more you want them to use it more I think here in we have one of the fundamental challenges in in fact you have a fiduciary obligation do you not to try to get kids to use your platform more it depends on how you define that um we we obviously are a business um but it's it I'm Sor Mr Zuckerberg just our time is it's it's not it's self-evident that you have a fiduciary obligation to get your users including users under 18 to use and engage with your platform more rather than less correct over the long term but in the near term we often take a lot of steps including we we made a change to show less videos that that on the platform that reduced amount of time by more than 50 million hours but if your shareholders ask you Mark I wouldn't Mr Zuckerberg here but your shareholders might be on a firstname basis with you mark are you trying to get kids to use meta products more or less you'd say more right well I would say that over the long term we're trying to I mean let's look so the 10K you file with the SEC a few things I want to note here are some quotes and this is a a filing that you sign correct yes yeah our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in adding retaining and engaging active users here's another quote if our users decrease their level of Engagement with our products our Revenue Financial results and business may be significantly harmed here's another quote we believe that some users particularly younger users are aware of and actively engaging with other productss and services similar to as a substitute for ours continues in the event that users increasingly engage with other products and services we may experience a decline in use and engagement in key demographics or more broadly in which case our business would likely be harmed you have an obligation as the chief executive to encourage your team to get kids to use your platform more Senator this is I is that not self-evident you have a fuci obligation to your shareholders to get kids to use your platform more I think that the thing that's not intuitive is the the direction is to make the products more useful so that way people want to use them more we don't give our the teams running the Instagram feed or the Facebook feed a goal to increase the amount of time that people spend yeah but you don't dispute and your and your 10K makes clear you want your users engaging more and using more the platform and I think this gets to the RO of the challenge because it's the overwhelming view of the public certainly in my home state of Georgia uh and we've had some discussions about the underlying science that this platform is harmful for children I mean you are familiar with and not just your platform by the way social media in general 2023 report from the Surgeon General about the impact of social media on kids mental health which cited evidence that kids who spend more than three hours a day on social media have double the risk of poor mental health outcomes including depression and anxiety you familiar with that Surgeon General report in the underlying study I I read the report yes do you dispute it no but I think it's important to characterize it correctly I think what he was flagging in the report is that there seems to be a correlation and obviously the mental health issue is very important so it's something that needs to be stud the thing is that's that's everyone knows there's a correlation everyone knows that kids who spend a lot of time too much time on your platforms are at risk and it's not just the mental health issues I mean let let me ask you a question is your platform safe for kids I believe it is but there's a important difference between correlation and causation you because we're not going to be able to get anywhere we want to work in a productive open honest and collaborative way with the private sector to pass legislation that will protect Americans that will protect American children above all and that will allow businesses to thrive in this country if we don't start with an open an honest candid realistic assessment of the issues we can't do that the first point is you want kids to use the platform more in fact you have an obligation to but if you're not willing to acknowledge it's a dangerous place for children the internet is a dangerous place for children not just your platform isn't it isn't the internet a dangerous place for children I think it can be yeah there's both great things that people can do and there are harms that we need to work to yeah it's a dangerous place for children there are families here who have lost their children there are families across the country whose children have engaged in self harm who have experienced low self-esteem who have been sold deadly pills on the internet the internet's a dangerous place for children and your platforms are dangerous places for children do you agree I think that there are harms that we need to work to mitigate okay Ian I'm not gonna I think overall why not why not just acknowledge it why why do we have to do the the very careful I disagree with the characterization that the internet's a dangerous place for children um I I think you're you're trying to characterize our products as inherently dangerous and I think that inherent or not your your products are places where children can experience harm they can experience harm to their mental health they can be sold drugs they can be prayed upon by predators that you know they're dangerous places and and and yet you have an obligation to promote the use of these platforms by children and look all I'm all I'm trying to suggest to you Mr Zuckerberg and my my time is is running short is that in order for you to succeed you and your colleagues here we have to acknowledge these basic truths we have to be able to come before the American people the American public the people in my state of Georgia and acknowledge the internet is dangerous including your platforms there are predators lurking there are drugs being sold there are harms to mental health that are taking a huge toll on kids quality of life and yet you have this incentive not just you Mr Zuckerberg all of you have an incentive to boost maximize use utilization and engagement and that is where public policy has to step in to make sure that these platforms are safe for kids so kids are not dying so kids are not overdosing so kids are not cutting themselves or killing themselves because they're spending all day scrolling instead of playing outside and I appreciate all of you for your testimony we will continue to engage as we develop this legislation thank you senator from Tennessee thank you Mr chairman thank you for to each of you for coming and I know some of you had to be subpoena to get here but we do appreciate that you all are here Mr Chu I want to come to you first uh we've heard that you're looking at putting a headquarters in Nashville and likewise in Silicon Valley and Seattle and what you're going to find probably is that the welcome mat is not going to be rolled out for you in Nashville like it would be in California there are a lot of people in Tennessee that are very concerned about the way tick talk is basically building dossier on our kids the way they are building those on their virtual you and also that that information is held in China in Beijing as you responded to Senator Blumenthal and I last year in reference to that question and we also know that a major music label yesterday said they were pulling all of their content off your site because of your issues on payment on artificial intelligence and because of the negative impact on our kids mental health so we will see how that progresses uh Mr Zuckerberg I want to come to you uh we have just had Senator Blumenthal and I of course have had some internal documents and emails that have come our way one of the things that really concerned me is that you referred to your young users in terms of their lifetime value of being roughly $27 per teenager and each of you should be looking at these kids their t-shirts they're wearing to say today say I'm worth more than $270 we've got some standing up in those t-shirts now and some of the children from our state some of the children the parents that we have worked with just to think whether it is Becca Schmidt David mik Sarah flat anal showed would you say that life is only worth [Music] $270 what could possibly lead you I mean I listen to that I know you're a dad I'm a mom I'm a grandmom and how could you possibly even have that thought it is astounding to me and I think this is one of the reasons that um States 42 states are now suing you because of features that they consider to be addictive that you are pushing forward and in the emails that we've got from 2021 that go from August to November there is the staff plan that is being discussed and Antony Davis Nick clle Cheryl Sandberg Chris Cox Alex Schulz Adam misseri are all on this chain of emails on the well-being plan and then we get to one Nick did email Mark for emphasis to emphasize his support for the package but it sounds like it lost out to various other pressures and priorities see this is what bothers us children are not your priority children are your product children you see as a way to make money and children protecting children in this virtual space you made a conscious decision even though Nick CAG and others were going through the process of saying this is what we do the these documents are really Illuminating and it just shows me that growing this business expanding your Revenue what you were going to put on those quarterly filings that was the priority the children were not it's very clear um I want to talk with you about the pedophile ring because that came up earlier and the Wall Street Journal reported on that and one of the things that we found out was after that became evident then you didn't take that content down and it was content that showed that teens were for sale and were offering themselves to older men and you didn't take it down because it didn't violate your community standards do you know how often a child is bought or sold for sex in this country every two minutes every two minutes a child is bought or sold for sex that's not my stat that is a TBI stat now finally this content was taken down after a congressional staffer went to meta's Global head of safety so would you please explain to me and to all these parents why explicit predatory content does not violate your platform's terms of service or your community standards Sher Senator let me try to address all the things that you just said it does violate our standards we work very hard to take it down take it down we well we've reported I think it's more than 26 million examples of this kind of content take it down until a congressional staffer brought it up it may be that in this case we made a mistake and missed something we make a lot of mistakes we have leading teams that talk with you about your Instagram creators program and about the push we found out through these documents that you actually are pushing forward because you want to bring kids in early you see these younger tweenagers as valuable but an untapped audience quoting from the emails and suggesting teens are actually household influencers to bring their younger siblings into your platform into Instagram now how can you ensure that in creators your product your program does not facilitate illegal activities when you fail to remove content pertaining to the sale of Miners and it is happening once every two minutes in this country um Senator our tools for identifying that kind of content or industry leading that doesn't mean we're perfect there are definitely issues that we have but we continue Zuckerberg yes there are a lot that is slipping through it appears that you're trying to be the premier sex trafficking course not Senator Senator that's ridiculous it is not ridiculous you want to turn around and want this content on our platforms and why don't you take it down we are here discussing we you to work with us no you're not you are not and the problem is we've been working on this Senator wel over there we've been working on this stuff for a decade you have an army of lawyers and lobbyists that have fought us on this every step of the way you work with net Choice the KO Institute taxpayers protection Alliance and chamber of progress to actually fight our bipartisan legislation to keep kids safe online so are you going to stop funding these groups are you going to stop l against this and come to the table and work with us yes or no Senator we have a yes or no of course we'll work with you on on the legislation the door is open we've got all these bills you need you need to come to the table each and every one of you need to come to the table and you need to work with us kids are [Applause] dying Senator Welch uh um I want to thank my colleague Senator Blackburn for her decade of work on this I actually have some optimism there is a consensus today that didn't exist say 10 years ago that there is a profound threat to children to mental health to safety there's not a dispute that was in debate before that's a starting point secondly we're identifying concrete things that can be done in four different areas one is industry standards two is legislation three is are the courts and then four is a proposal that Senator Bennett Senator Graham myself and Senator Warren have to establish an agency a governmental agency whose respons responsibility would be to engage in this on a systematic regular basis with proper resources and I just want to go through those I appreciate the industry standard decisions and steps that you've had you you've taken in your companies but it's not enough uh and that's what I think you're hearing from my colleagues like for instance where there are layoffs and it is in the trusted uh the trust and verify programs uh that's alarming because it looks like there is a reduction in emphasis on protecting things like you just added M yino 100 employees in in Texas to in this category uh and how many did you have before I the company is just coming through a significant restructuring so we've increased the number of trust and safety employees and agents all over the world by at least 10% so far in the last 14 months and we will continue to do so specifically in Austin Texas all right Mr Zuckerberg my understanding is there have been layoffs in that area as well there's added jobs there at Twitter but uh at meta have there been reductions in that there have been across the board not really focused on that area I think our our investment is is relatively consistent over the last couple of years we invested almost 5 billion in this work last year and I think this year we'll be on the same order of magnitude all right another question that's come up is when to the horror of a user of any of your platforms somebody has an image on there that's very compromising often of a sexual nature is there any reason in the world why a person who wants to take that down can't have a very simple same day response to have it taken down I'll start with Twitter oh that I'm sorry Senator I was taking notes could you repeat the question well there's a lot of examples of a young person finding out about an image that is of them and really compromises them and actually can create suicidal thoughts and they want to call up or they want to send an email and say take it down I mean why is it not possible for that to be responded to immediately well we all strive to take down any type of uh violative content or disturbing content immediately at X we have increased our capabilities with a twostep repor if I'm a parent or I'm a kid and I want this down shouldn't there be methods in place where it comes down you can see what the image is yes an ecos systemwide standard would improve and actually enhance the experience for users at all our platforms all right there there actually is an organization I think a number of the companies up here are a part of called take it down it's um some technology that we and and a few others bu you all are you all are in favor of that because that is going to give some peace of mind to people all right it really really matters uh I don't have that much time so we've talked about the legislation and uh Senator uh White House had asked you to get back with your position on Section 230 which I'll go to in a minute but I would welcome each of you resp responding uh as to your company's position on the bills that are under consideration in this hearing all right I'm just asking you to do that third the court this big question of section 230 and today uh I'm pretty inspired by the presence of the parents who have turned their extraordinary grief into action and hope that other parents may not have to suffer what for them is a devastating for everyone a devastating loss Senator White House asked you all to get back very concretely about section 230 and your position on that but it's an astonishing benefit that your industry has that no other industry has they just don't have to worry about being held accountable in court if they're negligent so you've got some explaining to do and I'm just reinforcing Senator White House's request that you get back specifically about that and then finally I want to ask about this notion this idea of a of a of a u Federal agency who's resourced and who the job is to be dealing with public interest matters that are really affected by big Tech it's extraordinary what has happened in our economy uh with technology and your companies represent Innovation and success uh but just as when the railroads were ascended and were in charge and ripping off Farmers because of practices they were able to get away with just as when Wall Street was flying high but there was no one regulating Blue Sky laws uh we now have a whole new world in the economy and Mr Zuckerberg I remember uh you testifying in the Energy and Commerce Committee and I asked you your position on the uh concept of a federal regulatory agency my recollection is that you were positive about that is that still the case um I I think it it could be a reasonable solution there are obviously pros and cons to doing that versus through the normal the the the current structure of having different Regulatory Agencies focused on specific issues but because a lot of the things trade off against each other like one of the topics that we talked about today is encryption and that's obviously really important for privacy and security but can we just go down the line I'm at the end but thank you m yino Senator I think the uh industry initiative to keep those conversations going would be something X would be very very proactive about if you think about our support of the report act the shield act the stop seesam act our support of the project save child to that I think our intentions are clear to participate and Lead here yeah Senator um we support National privacy legislation for example so that sounds like a good idea we just need to understand what it means all right uh Mr sper Senator we'll continue to work with your team and we'd certainly be open to exploring the right regulatory body for big technology but the idea of a regulatory body is something that you can see has Merit yes Senator and Mr Cen yeah we're very open to to working with with you and our peers and anybody on helping make the internet a safer place you know I think you mentioned this is not a one platform problem right so we we do look to collaborate with other companies and with nonprofits in the government thank you all Mr chairman I yield back thank you Senator Welch well we're going to conclude this hearing and thank you all for coming today you probably have your scorecard out there you've met at least 20 members of this committee and have your own impressions of their questioning and approach and the like but the one thing I want to make clear as chairman of this committee for the last three years is this was an extraordinary vote on an extraordinary issue a year ago we passed five bills unanimously in this committee you heard all the Senators every spot on the political Spectrum was covered every single Senator voted unanimously in favor of the five pieces of legislation we've discussed today it ought to tell everyone who follows Capitol Hill in Washington a pretty Stark message we get it and we live it as parents and grandparents we know what our daughters and sons and others are going through they cannot cope they cannot handle this issue on their own they're counting on us as much as they're counting on the industry to do the responsible thing and some will leave with impressions of our Witnesses and the companies they represent that you're right as an American citizen but you ought to also leave with the determination to keep the spotlight on us to do something not just to hold a hearing bring out a good strong crowd of supporters for change but to get something done no excuses no excuses we've got to bring this to a vote what I found in my time in the house and the Senate is that's the day that's the moment of Reckoning speeches notwithstanding press releases and the like the moment of Reckoning is when we call a vote on these measures it's time to do that I don't believe there's ever been a moment in America's wonderful history when a business or industry has stepped up and said regulate us put some legal limits on us businesses Exist by and large to be profitable and I think that we got to get behind that and say profitability at what cost Senator Kennedy Republican colleague said is our technology greater than our Humanity I I think that is a fundamental question that he asked what I would add to it are our politics greater than technology we're going to find out I want to thank a few people before we close up here I've got several staffers who worked so hard on this Alexander gilber thank you very much Alexander Jeff Hansen Scott [Applause] last point I'll make Mr Zuckerberg is is just a little advice to you I think your opening statement on Mental Health needs to be explained because I don't think it makes any sense there is an parent in this room who's had a child that's gone through an emotional experience like this that wouldn't tell you and me they changed right in front of my eyes they changed they hold themselves up in their room they no longer reached out to their friends they lost all interest in school these are mental health consequences that I think come with the abuse of this right to have access to this kind of technology so uh I will just I see my colleague you want to say a word uh I think it was a good hearing I hope something positive comes from it thank you all for coming the hearing record is going to remain open for a week for statements and questions may be sub uh submitted by Senators by 5:00 pm on Wednesday once again thanks to the witnesses for coming the hearing stands adjourned

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Length: 234min 20sec (14060 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 31 2024