The chief executives of social media companies Meta (META.O), X, TikTok, Snap (SNAP.N), and Discord will testify on online child sexual exploitation at a Jan. 31 U.S. Senate hearing, the panel’s Democratic chairman and the ranking Republican Lindsey Graham said on Wednesday. Reuters reported earlier this week that the hearing had been rescheduled from December after both X and Discord initially balked at participating and refused to accept a subpoena. The lawmakers said that the company CEOs agreed to participate after discussions between senators and the companies. They expected Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to testify voluntarily. At the same time, X’s Linda Yaccarino and Snap’s Jason Citron would be forced to do so with subpoenas, the lawmakers said.
The hearing will allow the lawmakers to question the CEOs about their company’s policies and practices on protecting children online. They have also pushed for legislation that would force the companies to be more transparent about how they protect kids and improve their reporting of online child sexual exploitation crimes. The Judiciary Committee approved bills this year to do just that, but they have stalled in the full Senate amid political divisions and heavy lobbying by the tech companies.
In a statement, the senators said they had discussed the issue with the company CEOs and expected them to agree to the hearing and testify voluntarily. The senators cited communications between them and the companies on the subject, including with Facebook whistleblower Arturo Bejar, who worked as an engineering director at Meta from 2009 to 2015.
Bejar, fired by the company in 2021 after publicly criticizing its failures in protecting young people online, told Congress on Tuesday that he believed Meta knew about the harm caused by its products and did not do enough to fix it. He alleged the company was focused on profits, not user safety.
A spokesperson for X, which Alphabet Inc’s Google owns, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Discord did not respond to a request for comment. The hearing is part of the senators’ ongoing efforts to rein in Big Tech, whose influence on younger generations has become a significant concern in both parties. The companies have come under intense scrutiny this year, with the Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee pushing to hold a hearing on Ticketmaster’s website meltdown during Taylor Swift ticket sales and the Republican senators approving a bill that would remove tech firms’ immunity from child sex abuse material laws.
Previously, the lawmakers held several hearings on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who is expected to be confirmed next month. The senators also oversee investigations into the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram and a company that sells drones to law enforcement agencies. They aim to hold a series of public hearings on the issues in coming months. – By Jessica Schoenherr for Reuters.
