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- Congress plans to grill leaders of Meta, X, TikTok and other tech companies over child safety.
- TikTok’s CEO is expected to announce $2 billion for user safety at a public hearing.
- It will also be the first time that X CEO Linda Yaccarino has testified before Congress.
Tech industry leaders are arriving in Washington, D.C., voluntarily or not, to support the platform’s efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation.
And already, TikTok’s CEO is promising some big changes.
Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held after three tech companies, Snap, Discord and X, were subpoenaed to testify.
This will be the first time X CEO Linda Yaccarino has testified before lawmakers, a role that has become a rite of passage for social media companies in hot water over digital security.
Yaccarino, who took over as CEO of X from Elon Musk last June, arrived in D.C. early to meet with several commissioners ahead of the hearing, people familiar with the matter told Axios.
She is scheduled to appear at the hearing at 10 a.m. ET, along with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and Discord CEO Jason Citron.
Chu is set to announce that TikTok will spend $2 billion to protect children and other users on the site as the video platform grapples with growing criticism from U.S. lawmakers, according to Bloomberg. thing.
The committee will grill CEOs about children’s online safety as lawmakers move forward with legislation to strengthen digital protections.
The hearing comes amid mounting reports of social media companies’ shortcomings in protecting children and their images from predators.
For example, a June 2023 investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that Instagram facilitated a network of pedophiles selling sex images of minors. In response, Meta told the Journal it had established a task force to address enforcement issues. “Child exploitation is a horrific crime,” the company told the Journal. “We are continually investigating ways to proactively defend against this behavior.”
Another example that could come up in the hearing is that, according to a 2023 New York Times report, even after former Secretary of State Elon Musk himself tweeted that “ending child exploitation is a top priority,” Child pornography is rampant in X. A representative for the company told the Times that it is hiring new employees to address the issues raised in the investigation.
Over the weekend, X announced plans to hire 100 full-time employees at a yet-to-be-opened content moderation hub in Austin aimed at combating child sexual exploitation on the platform.
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