The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-27)

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as kids die of fentanyl poisoning. Klobuchar questioned Stout on the company’s actions to rid the app of drug dealers — something Stout said was a priority for the company that it was committed to. Still, Klobuchar suggested that changing the law to hold companies liable could speed up the process. “So maybe that will make you work even faster, so we don’t lose another kid,” she said. Several senators also brought up teens’ mental health online, especially as it relates to eating disorders. The companies all said that any material encouraging eating disorders violates their policies, and that they work to keep it off their sites and instead point users to expert sources on the issues. “We, again, prohibit the type of content that glorifies or promotes these issues, such as eating disorders,” YouTube executive Leslie Miller said. Lawmakers also spent signifi- cant time grilling TikTok on its ownership — its parent company is Chinese firm ByteDance — after Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R- Tenn.), Ted Cruz (R-Te x.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) brought up concerns about data privacy. Beckerman said TikTok’s information about U.S. users is stored within the country, echoing what the company has said in the past. “We know that trust must be earned through action, and we continue to build age-appropriate experiences for teens throughout their development and empower families with parental controls,” Beckerman said in a statement before the hearing. TikTok disables direct messages for accounts whose owners are under 16 and sets direct messages off by default for 16- and 17-year- olds. Snapchat has emphasized its safety features, including show- ing users’ locations on a map feature only to friends they have added. Stout also sought to differenti- ate the platform from some of its competitors. In her opening remarks. She said social media “evolved to feature an endless feed of unvetted content, expos- ing individuals to a flood of viral, misleading and viral information. Snapchat is different. Snapchat was built as an antidote to social media.” [email protected] [email protected]

BY RACHEL LERMAN AND CRISTIANO LIMA

TikTok, Snapchat and You-
Tube, all social media sites popu-
lar with teens and young adults,
faced a barrage of questions and
accusations Tuesday from law-
makers who want the companies
to do more to protect children
online.
Executives from all three com-
panies committed to sharing in-
ternal research on how their
products affect kids — an issue
that has come to the forefront in
the past several weeks as tens of
thousands of pages of Facebook’s
internal documents have been re-
vealed by a whistleblower.
It was the first time testifying
before the legislative body for
both TikTok and Snap, the parent
company of Snapchat, despite
their popularity and Congress’s
increasing focus on tech industry
practices. By contrast, Facebook
representatives have testified 30
times in the past four years, and
Twitter executives including CEO
Jack Dorsey have testified on Cap-
itol Hill 18 times total.
Tuesday’s hearing, convened by
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-
Conn.) in front of the Senate Com-
merce Committee’s consumer
protection panel, drilled into how
kids’ data is protected online, how
features such as autoplay and
“likes” affect teenagers’ experi-
ences, and what the companies
are doing to rid their sites of
harmful behavior including bully-
ing and drug sales.
It is unclear exactly what data
the companies agreed to disclose
and whether they’ll disclose new
research they conduct.
After the Wall Street Journal
reported on internal research
Facebook had conducted into
how Instagram affects teens, the
company released heavily redact-
ed and annotated slide decks on
the findings. Lawmakers have

called on the company to release its full trove of research on the matter, and some have suggested subpoenaing the company to get all the data. Blumenthal warned the testifying companies that simply being different from Facebook is not a defense. “That bar is in the gutter,” he said. “What we want is not a race to the bottom but really a race to the top.” Facebook has been under fire for the past several weeks for the way its sites, particularly Insta- gram, negatively affect teenagers’ mental health after a whistleblower revealed a trove of internal Facebook documents. Some documents showed that some teen girls reported Instagram made their body image issues worse. The Journal first reported on those documents. Last month, Facebook executive Antigone Davis testified in front of Congress, facing accusations from senators that the company buried internal research about how its products may harm children. Facebook has defended its track record, and Davis said at the hearing that the company’s research in fact showed that teen girls struggling with mental health issues largely reported that they found Instagram to be more helpful than not. When Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before the subcommittee this month, lawmakers said her disclosures could mark a turning point in efforts to regulate the tech giants. “I think the time has come for action, and I think you are the catalyst for that action,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Hau- gen during the session. “There h as been a deafening... drumbeat of continuing disclosures about Facebook. They have deepened America’s concern and outrage and have led to increasing calls for accountability, and there will be accountability,” Blumen- thal said in his opening remarks. “This time is different.” Snap and TikTok have faced far less scrutiny from the government, including for how they affect kids, despite having huge

Sites defend how

they handle kids

TikTok, Snap, YouTube appear before Congress to address safeguards

numbers of users. TikTok says it has more than 1 billion monthly users, though it does not break down their ages. Snapchat has 500 million monthly active users and says more than 80 percent of its U.S. users are over 18. Even YouTube, where billions of videos are watched every day, has been overlooked at times by government tech investigations. Experts say this hearing is a good start at examining companies other than the biggest few. “Facebook is just not the only game in town,” said Harvard Law School lecturer Evelyn Douek, who studies the regulation of online speech. “If we’re going to talk about teen users, we should talk about the platforms that teens actually use, which is TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.” The company executives defended their approach to protecting kids online Tuesday, arguing

that they continually build features to better protect young users. While the tech executives all broadly expressed s upport for legislation to boost protections for kids online, including on privacy, senators expressed frustration that companies wouldn’t commit to supporting specific ideas they have proposed. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D- Mass.), a top advocate for children’s o nline safety w ho has intro- duced a bill to expand safeguards under federal kids privacy laws, hammered some of the companies for not taking a firm stance on the measure. After Snap executive Jennifer Stout declined to affirmatively support his measure, Markey said: “This is just what drives us crazy: ‘We want to talk, we want to talk, we want to talk.’ This bill’s been out there for years, and you

still don’t h ave a view on it. Do you support it or not?” Stout replied, “I think there are things we would like to work with you on, Senator.” TikTok executive Michael Beckerman said the company would be “happy to support” the bill if lawmakers made an “im- provement” to how it deals with verifying children’s age online. Blumenthal echoed Markey’s frustration when the executives declined to come out and support his bill to make it easier to sue companies over child exploitative material on their sites. “This is the talk that we’ve seen again and again and again and again: ‘We support the goals.’ But that’s meaningless if you don’t support the legislation,” he said. The three companies have faced some public backlash for the way they treat kids online — YouTube parent Google agreed to pay $170 million to settle allega- tions that it illegally collected data about children younger than 13 who watched toy videos and television shows on YouTube in 2019. Snap and TikTok have both faced pressure to stop illegal drug sales and connections on their sites, particularly as overdose deaths have soared. Parent groups have called on the sites to do more to stop drug trafficking

MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK Jennifer Stout, an executive with Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, addresses a Senate panel on protecting kids online. It was the first time Snap or TikTok had appeared before Congress.

“Facebook is just not the only game in town. If

we’re going to talk about teen users, we should talk

about the platforms that teens actually use, which

is TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.” Evelyn Douek, Harvard Law School

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