The St. Louis Postdispatch on how protecting kids online should be both technologically and politically possible:

Last month’s made-for-tv Senate grilling of several of America’s top tech moguls drove home the serious issue of harm that social media platforms can do to children. It also demonstrated yet again — with performative and at times outright clownish grandstanding by senators — why a political solution has been so elusive.but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing Congress can do.

What came through all the sound and fury of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is that these companies’ biggest fear is being exposed to lawsuits holding them accountable for their negligence regarding content. They currently enjoy almost complete legal protection from such suits, courtesy of Congress . ...

But the hearing showed how much bipartisan agreement there is on the particular urgency of combating online child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, social media harassment and other scourges that have made childhood a more treacherous landscape than it was before the digital age. The top-line moment for most of the country was the gratuitous takedown of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by Sen. Josh Hawley. The Missouri Republican pressed Zuckerberg to apologize to the audience of families of young online exploitation and harassment victims.

“Would you like to do so now?” asked Hawley, bringing more heat than light to the conversation as usual. “They’re here, you’re on national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims?”

Zuckerberg did, sort of, standing and turning toward the audience and saying he was “sorry for anything you have gone through.” One audience member, the father of a teenage suicide victim, later told CNN the viral moment was meaningless and “awkward.” ...

If the hearing displayed the hypocrisy and dysfunction of today’s political right, though, it also highlighted the bipartisan overlap on the issue of online danger to kids.

Unlike much of the overblown hysteria about, for example, the supposed censorship of conservative opinion on the internet, child sexual exploitation and related threats are real . ...

To the argument that fully filtering out even just dangers to kids would be an impossibly huge order for the platforms, we would counter by noting the amazing things social media companies can do today.

Advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence and other mindblowing developments indicate there’s virtually no technological goal these tech titans can’t achieve when properly motivated. And now, as before there even was an internet, nothing motivates entrepreneurs like a threat to their bottom line.