Facebook leader apologizes to families of those harassed online

WASHINGTON — In an unusually dramatic hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, senators grilled five of the country’s most prominent tech executives Wednesday about ways online platforms have enabled the spread of child sexual abuse material, as family members of victims watched from the audience.

In one extraordinary moment unlike anything seen over years of hearings involving the tech companies, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood up from the witness table and turned to directly address the family members whose children were victims of online harassment and exploitation. Zuckerberg said: “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.”

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent almost four hours needling Zuckerberg along with the CEOs of TikTok; Snap; Discord; and X, formerly known as Twitter, over concerns that their wildly popular products have enabled predators and endangered children around the country.

“Online child sexual exploitation is a crisis in America,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

— Many of the questions were sharp. Durbin asked Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, about a case in which he said a predator groomed a young person on the platform. “Did you and everyone else at Snap really fail to see that the platform was a perfect tool for sexual predators?” he asked Spiegel.

— Senators repeatedly called to repeal or overhaul a law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that shields the platforms from many lawsuits over content posted by their users. Lawmakers said the law made it impossible for the victims of online exploitation to seek justice, but efforts to change it have stalled out in recent years. The tech companies say that the law has been vital to the growth of the modern internet.

— The tech executives talked about their efforts to keep young people off their platforms. But regulators have said that millions of underage children have signed up for Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

— Unusually, three of the executives — Spiegel, Jason Citron of Discord and Linda Yaccarino of X — had to be subpoenaed to testify. (Zuckerberg of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also testified.)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.