‘You Have Blood on Your Hands’: Bipartisan Senators Rip into Big Tech CEOs for Failing to Stop Child Exploitation

Senators on both sides of the aisle confronted Big Tech CEOs with evidence that their platforms facilitate the exploitation of children during a Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday morning, and chastised them for resisting legislation designed to address the malign effects of social media.

The chief executives of Meta, TikTok, Discord, Snap, and X (formerly known as Twitter) listened as the assembled lawmakers recounted the stories of constituents whose children had been harmed by their use of social media. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Chew appeared before the committee voluntarily while Jason Citron of Discord, Evan Spiegel of Snap, and Linda Yaccarino of X appeared under force of a subpoena.

Senator Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee began the hearing by playing a video montage featuring parents displaying photos of children they lost to suicide due to abuse on social media and testimony from survivors of child exploitation.

Senator Lindsey Graham included in his opening statement a particularly galling account of a South Carolina boy who committed suicide after Nigerian scammers he encountered on Instagram tricked him into sending nude photographs of himself and then used the photos to extort money from him.

“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 that’s killing people,” Graham said.

Graham and his colleagues repeatedly pointed out that, despite their political differences, the members of the Judiciary Committee had come together to pass five pieces of legislation designed protect children on social media — and scolded the executives for lobbying against those bills. He emphasized that the best way to address the harm caused by social media would be to reform Section 230, which provides liability protection for online platforms, to allow parents to sue the companies for harm caused to their children.

“You can’t be sued! That has to stop, folks! …for all the upsides, the dark side is too great to deal with. We do not need to live this way as Americans,” Graham said.

Section 230 has not been modified since it was passed 30 years ago, in the internet’s infancy, and is therefore in urgent need of an update, several lawmakers argued.

Section 230 “was enacted to allow a nascent industry to grow. But now, it has become an entitlement for the most profitable industry in the history of capitalism to line their pockets at the expense of our kids,” Durbin added.

In 2013, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children  received approximately 1,380 per day regarding child sex abuse material. By 2023, this skyrocketed to 100,000 tips per day.  There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of victims per offender as technology allows predators to ensnare a shocking number of children without ever leaving their home. A single defendant prosecuted in Minnesota sextorted over 1,100 children.

In response to the haranguing by lawmakers, the gathered executives touted the features of their platforms that aim to prevent child sexual exploitation, largely age-verification requirements, parental approval tools, and content-flagging tools.

The senators were unmoved.

“How’s that going for you,” Senator Mike Lee asked after Zuckerberg insisted that Meta platforms do not allow the posting of explicit material, prompting laughter from the audience.