Zuckerberg apologizes over socmed harms to children
Families of victims of online predators attended the senate hearing
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta which owns social media giant Facebook, gave a public apology in the United States Congress on Wednesday as hostile lawmakers grilled tech chiefs over the dangers that children face on their platforms.
During one round of heated questioning, Zuckerberg was made to stand up and apologize to the families of victims who had packed the room of the US Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said in the hearing. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.”
Zuckerberg told the lawmakers that “keeping young people safe online has been a challenge since the internet began and as criminals evolve their tactics, we have to evolve our defenses, too.”
He added that, according to research, “on balance” social media was not harmful to the mental health of young people.
Zuckerberg’s apology came days ahead of Facebook’s 20th anniversary.
He and three friends launched thefacebook.com on 4 February 2004. The site was then restricted to Harvard College students.
It became available to students at other US universities before opening to anyone in 2006.
Facebook became a venue for connecting with just about anyone, anywhere and by 2023 reported being used by more than 3 billion people monthly — a three percent growth over the previous year.
Safety nets
In the SJC session titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” lawmakers confronted tech giants for not doing enough to thwart online dangers for children, including from sexual predators and teen suicide.
Also testifying to senators were X’s Linda Yaccarino, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, Evan Spiegel of Snap and Discord’s Jason Citron.
Chew said “as a father of three young children myself I know that the issues that we’re discussing today are horrific and the nightmare of every parent.”
“I intend to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety. This year alone, we have 40,000 safety professionals working on this topic,” he said.
Meta also said 40,000 of its employees work on online safety and that $20 billion has been invested since 2016 to make the platform safer.
Ahead of their testimony, Meta and X, formerly Twitter, announced new measures in anticipation of the fiery session.