Every now and then, Congress gets it in its mind that it's going to fix the internet, so it hauls in the Big Tech CEOs of the moment for a public tsk-tsk-ing that reliably stirs up some drama but ends with little in the way of concrete resolutions.
And so it was on Capitol Hill today, this 86th day of January in the year 2024.
ICYMI: The chief executives of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X spent a few hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, getting grilled by lawmakers and stared at by dozens of friends and relatives of kids who've been harmed by social media.
And what's great is that everyone agreed the platforms have made mistakes that put children at risk and immediately got on board with common-sense regulations to make their sites safer. I'M KIDDING, of course. But there were some apologies and a good bit of drama, as my colleagues Brian Fung and Clare Duffy write.
'Blood on your hands'
Historically, lawmakers haven't always been super, um, internet-literate in these hearings. But they've come a long way, and largely didn't squander their time on easily Google-able questions about the basics of Facebook. Democrats and Republicans took a hard line, talking over the executives at times. At one point, Senator Lindsey Graham said the CEOs had "blood on your hands."
In an exchange with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Louisiana Republican John Kennedy said: "You're in the foothills of creepy. You track people who aren't even Facebook users...I just wonder if our technology is greater than our humanity in the interest of this funnel."
The apologies
Behind the executives sat dozens of advocates who say their children suffered or died as a result of social media.
In one of the more surprising moments, Zuckerberg stood up and turned to the families behind him to apologize.
"I'm sorry for everything you have all been through," he said. "No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer."
Later, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel also apologized to families whose children have died after they purchased drugs on Snapchat.
TikTok paranoia and just straight-up xenophobia...
Mistrust of social media is perhaps the most bipartisan issue in Congress. And TikTok, in particular, gets the electeds all fired up.
That put CEO Shou Chew in the hot seat, and it was deeply uncomfortable to watch.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton pestered Chew, who is Singaporean, about whether he had connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
Chew kept his cool, but clearly didn't like the xenophobic line of questioning, which he was subjected to a similar inquiry in Congress last spring.
Cotton: "Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?"
Chew: "Senator, I'm Singaporean. No."
Cotton: "Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?"
Chew: "No, senator. Again, I'm Singaporean."
Cotton must have been out sick the day they taught geography at Harvard. Or he was just being a jerk. I guess we'll never know...
Lotta words, little work
While dunking on a bunch of rich tech moguls for their gross negligence and relentless profit-mining is usually my idea of a good time, it's a bit less thrilling coming from members of the highest legislative body in the land. Like, they make the laws — it's right there in the job description.
But in the nearly two decades that the social media has been an established Thing, Congress has passed exactly zero meaningful laws to it. Over and over, that responsibility has fallen to state legislatures and courts to work out, creating a wildly ineffective patchwork of rules and regulations.
Graham alluded that fact Wednesday: "Open up the courthouse door. Until you do that, nothing will change. Until these people can be sued for the damage they're doing, it is all talk."
All talk, indeed.
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