CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media firms to testify at hearing on child safety

Mark Zuckerberg, Linda Yaccarino, Evan Spiegel and other leading social media executives face a grilling on Wednesday from lawmakers concerned about child exploitation and safety on their services.

The three CEOs—who lead Meta, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Snap, respectively—are scheduled to appear in Washington alongside TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Discord CEO Jason Citron, as witnesses at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about safeguarding children on their respective platforms.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have blasted the companies for failing to properly address what some have called a “plague of online child sexual exploitation” on social media apps. The goal of the hearing is to inform legislation that members of Congress believe is needed to compel the firms to do more to protect children on their platforms.

In November, committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C said that they issued subpoenas to Yaccarino, Spiegel and Citron to testify at the hearing.

Wednesday’s hearing is focused specifically on issues pertaining to child exploitation and the prevalence of child sexual abuse material on social media. But the overarching theme is that these under regulated tech companies have designed and built platforms that are addictive, and which damage the mental well-being of children and young adults.

In recent months, Meta has been hit with a number of lawsuits related to the well-being of children on its apps like Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico’s attorney general filed a civil suit against Meta in December, alleging that the company’s apps are enabling sexual predators to exploit children and distribute CSAM and that the company failed to address the problem because its leadership was more focused…