It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the leaders of social media companies were on show to thrash out matters on technology and their threats on January 31 in a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.” The companies present: X Corp, represented by Linda Yaccarino; TikTok Inc, fronted by Shou Chew; Snap Inc, by Evan Spiegel; Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; and Jason Citron of Discord Inc.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) got the ghoulish proceedings underway with a video featuring victims and survivors. “I was sexually exploited on Facebook,” declares one. “I was sexually exploited on Instagram,” comes another. “I was sexually exploited on X.” And so forth.
Exploitation leads to distress and worse. “The child that … gets exploited is never the same again,” says a parent. One lost their son to suicide after being exploited on Facebook. Then, the failings of indifferent Big Tech operatives are carted out. “How many more kids will suffer and die because of social media?” goes the tune. “We need Congress to do something for our children and protect them.”
This supplied Durbin the ideal, moralistic (and moralising) springboard. And nothing excites those in Congress more than a moral crisis from which much mischief can be made. There was, he solemnly declared, a “sexual exploitation is a crisis in America.” In the decade from 2013 to 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) had received and increase from 1,380 cyber tips per day to 100,000 daily reports. The modern smartphone has become a hellish conduit of exploitation. “Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children. Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of paedophiles. Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. TikTok has become a ‘platform of choice’ for predators to access, engage, and groom children for abuse”.
From the Republican side, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham saw social media companies in their current design and operation as “dangerous products. They’re destroying lives, threatening democracy itself. These companies must be reined in or the worst is yet to come.”
The senators were ploughing familiar ground: the corrosion of mental health including instances of self-harm and suicide, the role of social media in perpetrating a number of crimes (drug dealing, sextortion) and the blissful digital heavens such companies have created for any number of unsavoury cults, ideologies and inclinations.
What, then, of it? For one thing, Zuckerberg, who was making his eighth appearance at such a hearing, was hardly going to offer anything constructive – at least in a binding sense. In the month just passed, internal Meta documents revealed a number of concerns from employees that the company’s messaging apps had featured in various instances of child exploitation. Little was done about it, which was precisely to be expected.
As a useful whipping boy of Congressional outrage, Meta’s CEO provided the perfect platform for senatorial outrage. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) could spice the airwaves (and the global social media universe) with his righteous display: “There’s families of victims here today. Have you apologised to the victims? Would you like to do so now?” Zuckerberg, reminded that he was on national television, did the performing seal act, turning around and facing the audience.
A number of photos of deceased children were helpfully offered to torment the guilty soul. “I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg responded. “Everything that you all have gone through, it’s terrible.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Source: CounterPunch
