Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) exposed the lack of tools from Facebook, Instagram and parent company Meta to protect minors from attacks and exposure to sexualized content.
In the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Privacy, Technology, and Law Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law last week, Senator Josh Hawley addressed Meta whistleblower Arturo Béjar and questioned him about a 2021 memo in which Béjar had attempted to raise concerns about the company’s failure to protect children. .
Bejar first taken note of the problem when he saw the sexualized content his 14-year-old was presented with on Instagram.
“In that memo you told them that according to your own research, one in eight children, children now, had experienced unwanted sexual advances in the past seven days,” Hawley said. “And about one in three – I think it was 27% – had experienced unwanted sexual advances outside the seven-day period.”
Béjar responded that the executives he had emailed about the issue, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Meta CEO Sheryl Sandberg, ignored his email.
Senator Hawley then asked about the contents of a Article in the Wall Street Journalwhere they wrote:
Instagram helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly dedicated to the commission and purchase of sexual content for minors.
Pedophiles have long been using the Internet, but unlike the forums and file transfer services that target people interested in illegal content, Instagram does not only organize these activities. Instagram’s algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and directs them to content sellers through recommendation systems that excel at matching people who share these interests, the magazine and academic researchers found.
“This is a stunning, stunning report, Mr. Béjar, that more than buttresses what you said, trying to tell the executives who ignored you,” Senator Hawley told Béjar.
At the same time, Hawley said, Facebook has worked with the Biden administration “to censor First Amendment protected speech.”
“There’s an example of a parent in my home state of Missouri who wanted to post about a school board meeting,” Hawley said. “Facebook used human moderators to remove that post. That was important. That has to come down. We sure as hell can’t have them posting about school board meetings. But the things your daughter has been through, this gang of pedophiles, in the plural, that Facebook just can’t find time for. They simply don’t have the resources for it.”
Senator Hawley concluded that the only way Big Tech will ever change is if people have the ability to sue the social media platforms when they are wronged.
“If you want to drive change at these companies, you have to allow people to sue them. […] And the other thing I want to say is, about the money – the money pouring into this Capitol from Big Tech is obscene, it’s totally obscene – and if we really wanted to change anything, we would take the corporate money out. of politics,” Hawley declared.
Watch the full exchange below:
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