at Wednesday’s hearing of TikTok, the video
platform that is wildly popular with teens and
younger children.
“TikTok is designed to be censored,” she
said, maintaining that its ownership by the
Chinese company ByteDance makes it ripe for
mandated content. Haugen asserted TikTok’s
algorithms make it more addictive to users
even than Facebook’s messaging service
Instagram — which she has criticized in detail,
citing internal research showing apparent
harm to some young users, especially girls.
The research suggested that peer pressure
generated by Instagram has led to mental
health and body-image problems and in some
cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.
Spokespeople for TikTok didn’t immediately
respond to a message seeking comment.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who heads the full
Energy and Commerce committee, said a proposal
from its senior Republican, Rep. Cathy McMorris
Rodgers of Washington, isn’t identical to the
Democrats’ bill but represents a good start for
potential compromise.
All of the legislative proposals face a heavy lift
toward final enactment by Congress.
Some experts who support stricter regulation
of social media say the Democrats’ legislation as
written could have unintended consequences.
It doesn’t make clear enough which specific
algorithmic behaviors would lead to loss of the
liability protection, they suggest, making it hard to
see how it would work in practice and leading to
wide disagreement over what it might actually do.
Meta Platforms, the new name of Facebook’s
parent company, has declined to comment on