The Senate holds a hearing for 5 executives of technology companies to hold them accountable for child protection measures on their platforms (Reuters)

The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on child internet safety ended on Wednesday with no clear decisions in sight, and tense deliberations between senators and technology company executives lasted just under four hours.

The session included CEOs of five technology companies; They are led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X Company's Linda Yiccarino, TikTok's Xu Zixiu, Snapchat's Evan Spigal, and Discord's Jason Citron.

One of the most prominent scenes in the hearing was the presence of family members of the victims among the audience who cheered on the senators after they reprimanded the executives, especially Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who addressed the crowd directly, apologizing for the suffering his platform had caused to the families of the victims.

One of the most prominent scenes of the hearing was the presence of the victims’ family members in the audience (Reuters)

Here are some of the most important key scenes from the hearing, according to a New York Times report:

1- A tense and noisy session

In one of the most vociferous tech hearings in recent years, senators from both parties refused to back down, pressing the CEOs of Meta, X, TikTok, Discord, and Snap to take responsibility and apologize for their companies' roles in harming children.

Sometimes the senators would shout and talk to the executives, drawing applause from the children in the room. "You have blood on your hands," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told the business leaders.

2- Tik Tok and Meta... the largest share of reprimands

Despite the presence of the CEOs of X, Snap and Discord, the senators directed most of their criticism to Mark Zuckerberg and Xiu over the number of incidents of violations across the Instagram and TikTok platforms.

Senators directed most of their criticism towards Mark Zuckerberg and demanded that he apologize to the families of the victims (Reuters)

3- Two of the five CEOs agree to support the Children’s Internet Safety Law

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, and Linda Yaccarino, who leads X, agreed to support the Children's Online Safety Act, known as KOSA. The proposed law would require social media networks, video game sites and messaging apps to take "reasonable measures" to prevent harm - including cyberbullying, harassment, sexual exploitation, anorexia, self-harm and harmful marketing - to minors who use their platforms.

Zuckerberg, Chiu, and Jason Citron did not pledge to support the law. Some of them argued that the law could be directly beneficial but contains some broad restrictions that may conflict with freedom of expression issues.

4- TikTok was criticized for its relations with China

Lawmakers have repeatedly pressed Chiu about TikTok's ties to the Chinese government, due to the platform's Chinese ownership of ByteDance. Zhu - who was born in Singapore and still lives there with his three children - was asked whether he had a Chinese passport or applied for Chinese citizenship, and he replied that he had not done so, even though he had lived in Beijing for five years, according to a New York Times report. .

He was also questioned about the progress of TikTok's multibillion-dollar plan to block sensitive US user data.

The head of the TikTok platform, Xu Zi Xiu, was asked if he had a Chinese passport or applied for one, and he answered in the negative (Reuters)

5- Noticeable absences

93% of American teenagers use the video streaming service on YouTube from Google, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2023, and this makes it the most popular platform among teenagers, ahead of the runner-up in the survey, Tik Tok, which 63% of teenagers said they used. But the YouTube platform did not appear to represent it at the Senate Judiciary Committee session along with the other platforms on Wednesday.

Josh Sorbie, a spokesman for the Senate hearing committee, said the five companies that appeared offered a variety of products that took different approaches to monitoring child sexual abuse material. He added that committee leaders agreed to have the five witnesses present at Wednesday's hearing.

According to the report, YouTube's exclusion from the session may be due to its previous subjection to scrutiny, in addition to the European Commission's request from it last year to provide more information on how to protect the physical and mental health of young users.

The Federal Trade Commission fined Google $170 million in 2019 to settle accusations that YouTube illegally collected data from underage users.

YouTube director Ivy Choi said in a statement last week that YouTube considers any content that exposes minors to danger unacceptable, and said that the company has made its technology available to detect child sexual abuse material to other companies and non-governmental organizations.

In 2022, YouTube reported more than 631,000 pieces of content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which works to monitor the spread of child sexual abuse material, according to a report issued by Google.

Apple was also absent from the session, and the company had abandoned a plan in 2021 to scan files stored in iCloud, its cloud storage platform, for child sexual abuse material, and activists urged the company to do more.

An Apple spokesperson referred to a letter last August in which the company's director of child safety, Eric Neuenschwander, said that child sexual abuse material "is abhorrent and we are committed to breaking the chain of blackmail and influence against children."

Source: New York Times