Zuckerberg apologizes to parents of social media victims at Senate hearing

Sen. Lindsey Graham strongly criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a hearing at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, where parents, holding photographs and placards of their young children, joined in the condemnation with applause.

The purpose of the hearing was to hold major tech companies accountable for online child sexual exploitation. Social media giants were accused of negligence in implementing measures to address the exposure of children and youth to harmful content and sexual exploitation, incidents that have tragically led to some deaths.

The four-hour hearing saw the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord, and X (formerly Twitter) testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Zuckerberg faced the toughest questioning among the CEOs, given that Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are estimated to be used by at least 2 billion people worldwide. Over half of the 36 million cases of online child sexual exploitation reported to the U.S. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2023 were linked to Facebook.

The executives faced harsh criticism from senators, with Sen. Josh Hawley compelling Zuckerberg to stand and questioning whether he would apologize to the victims. “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg told parents in the gallery.

Other CEOS, including Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, also offered apologies. Spiegel expressed regret to parents whose children accessed illegal drugs on Snapchat, leading to fatal consequences. Sen. Amy Klobuchar raised concerns about the tech industry’s inaction, emphasizing that meaningful improvements would be elusive without legal changes. The Democratic senator advocated for a substantial overhaul of legal immunity granted to these companies. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew pledged to allocate $2 billion to protect children using the platform.

Senators questioned Chew about his ties to China, given that ByteDance, a Chinese company, owns TikTok. There are concerns in the U.S. that the Chinese Communist Party could exploit TikTok to collect personal information from major Western countries. In response to repeated queries about his affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party and his nationality, Chew clarified, “I’m Singaporean.”


Jeong-Soo Hong hong@donga.com