2024-02-03 13:30:00
Last Wednesday, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee received Jason Lemon (CEO do Discord), Evan Spiegel (Snap CEO), Shou Chew (CEO of TikTok), Linda Yaccarino (CEO do X) e Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) for a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis”.
Over the course of approximately 4 hours, 19 Republican and Democratic senators took turns questioning the executives regarding the efforts (or the lack of them) to combat not only online sexual abuse, but other forms of negligence and lack of action by companies on their platforms, including issues related to mental health, self-esteem, marketing of controlled or prohibited medications and, of course, moderation.
If you, like me, had already watched the other tech CEO interrogations, you probably already knew what to expect: misinformed politicians, unable to understand the technology they were asking regarding (and worse, trying to legislate) and, often, just taking the opportunity to make theater for their constituents, in long sessions of aggressive verbiage full of fallacies and false equivalences, without much north or central point.
It wasn’t the case. Well, that almost wasn’t the case. The cast of the theater of indignation was present, following all, it is an election year. However, unlike other interrogations, good part of senators was prepared and well-informed to point out the deficiencies of each social network, in addition to debating in more depth the need to reform (or even eliminate) the Section 230which basically exempts technology companies from responsibility for the attitudes of their users.
Loaded atmosphere
In the first minutes, it was clear that there would be no chance of victory for the executives.
In the audience, dozens of family members held posters and photos of young people who had lost their lives in a way related to social media. Before the executives were sworn in, a video was shown with testimonies from survivors, as well as relatives of fatal victims.
In his opening statement, the president of the session, Senator Dick Durbin made a point of highlighting that, while the CEOs of Meta and TikTok had agreed to testify voluntarily, it was necessary to subpoena the other three executives, with the right to send agents from the US Marshalls Service in the case of the Discord CEO.
Before the first questions, the five directors read statements in which they listed the pale efforts to combat child abuse on their social networks (I say pale compared to the number of cases that actually occur); Some also tried to say that they themselves have children, hoping to create a bond of empathy and connection with the problem. Did not work.
In the first questions, following Durbin specifically cited Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Chew.
The performance of each CEO
Jason Lemon, by far the most inexperienced among the executives, was there on a trip. The few times he was asked something individually, Citron just tried to read pre-written statements, amid interruptions from the senators. Citron tried in vain to explain that Discord supports the intention of the child protection laws that are being processed, but that it does not agree with the rules in their entirety
Already Evan Spiegel, perhaps the one who best prepared for the interrogation, was succinct and direct in his answers. He detailed (most of the time) the information and data requested by the senators. With a confident and fluid speech, in contrast to the stuttered speech of most of his peers, Spiegel seemed like the executive who had the least to lose during the session, despite his audience possibly being the most made up of minors.
Linda Yaccarinoin his debut in what will probably be many testimonials while he is CEO of X, showed from the first seconds that his objective was one: to take advantage of every opportunity to sell from Twitter.
At one point, she referred to X as a company that is “only 14 months old”, and stated that “only 1% of its active users in the US are teenagers”. Not everyone bought these two ideas, but they didn’t need to. Like Spiegel and Citron, Yaccarino spent most of his time watching the events.
Com Shou Chew, the senators’ biggest problem is still (and always will be) the fact that TikTok belongs to the Chinese company ByteDance. In fact, little was discussed regarding child safety on the app. However, on the rare occasions that this was discussed, Chew responded with facts that indicated that the platform is possibly the one that offers the most tools and alternatives for parental control and responsible use.
Most of the time, during the theater of indignation promoted by the senators, Chew knew when to record that a statement was wrong, and when it would be better to just remain silent, aware that nothing he said would be assimilated or taken as true.
Finally, we arrived at Mark Zuckerberg. Very different from past statements — and especially the one from 2018, in which he appeared absolutely expressionless and calm to the point of bordering on apathy — Zuckerberg was agitated, irritated and sweaty. In multiple situations, he and one or another senator spoke over each other, mutually refuting accusations of distortion and lies. It was chaos.
Perhaps the segment that best illustrates this situation is the exchange of barbs between Zuckerberg and Senator Josh Howley, from the state of Missouri. Howley, some may remember, gained prominence on January 6, 2021, when he made gestures of encouragement to the Capitol invaders. A few hours later, he was caught on security cameras fleeing through the back door.
Well then. In a moment that will surely be remembered for years, Howley used his vast experience in antagonism to challenge an already very angry Zuckerberg to apologize to the families in the audience. Zuck relented, to the likely dismay of Meta’s legal team.
The performance of the senators
The truth is that if the leadership of the largest social networks in the world is to blame for the abuse or death of young users, legislators are equally to blame. For almost three decades, public bodies have been unable to keep up with the evolution of communication tools offered by technology giants and, in the rare opportunities in which they try to act, the result arrives so late that the regulated technology is already outdated and falling into disuse.
There is also, of course, the problem of lobbying. In 2023, the biggest technology companies have collectively invested more than $70 million in influence in Washington, with Meta ($19.2 million) and Amazon ($17.8 million) leading the way. Apple, for information, spent US$9.6 million.
That, however, is regarding to change. Throughout the interrogation, the US senators referred to five child protection bills:
- EARN IT Act which removes companies’ protections once morest child sexual abuse material (CSAM) matters.
- STOP CSAM Act which wants to increase the obligation to disclose information regarding cases of abuse, in addition to expanding protections for victims and making it easier to receive restitution.
- SHIELD Act which wants to fill gaps in existing legislation that prevent prosecutors from holding accountable those who share images without consent.
- Project Safe Childhood Act which wants to promote the development of new software, techniques and tools to help federal prosecutors and investigative agencies combat online child sexual exploitation crimes.
- REPORT Act ., which wants to update the federal law governing the reporting (and investigation) of suspected sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
On multiple occasions, they pressured executives to publicly support these (and other) laws, and failed on almost every occasion. The exceptions were Snap and X, which supported the KOSA Act which, like the previous ones, proposes a series of measures to combat the cyberbullying and protect the privacy of young people.
In addition to these laws, which will inevitably gain more strength and popular support in the coming days, the Section 230 was also widely discussed and criticized. Created in 1996, to alleviate the companies’ side during the fragility of the initial and promising period of the internet, the law currently serves as a shield of social networks every time someone tries to hold them accountable for not doing enough once morest abuse or in matters related to moderation.
In yet another show of bipartisan unity (the five previously mentioned bills also have bipartisan support), all senators agreed that Section 230 needs to be rethought and even eliminated.
On multiple occasions, senators asked questions such as “Why is the technology sector still the only one that enjoys this type of broad protection?”, “Why can’t these families sue you?”, “Why the protection of Sec. 230 is automatic, rather than something conquered?”, and received multiple versions of “uhm…”, “you see…”, “so…” in response.
Over the course of nearly four hours of questions, U.S. senators showed that they are finally one step ahead of the rhetorical and rhetorical tricks that social media companies have been employing for nearly two decades to evade stricter regulations in order to protect vulnerable users.
More than that, they showed that they know that the technology sector has spent the last few years not just cheering, but counting on inefficiency in regulating laws.
It is clear that politicians live on promises, and it would be prudent to only believe in changes when they have actually started to occur. But for the first time in many years and in countless testimonials, my impression was that the probability of something significant happening increased, rather than decreased.
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