Social media CEOs questioned on child sexual exploitation; Canton mom in attendance for late son

Jan. 31—WASHINGTON — The social media industry's top leaders were rebuked by members of Congress Wednesday over failing to protect children and teen users from online sexual exploitation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing convened for the first time together the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X, formerly Twitter. They testified during a tense session that lasted nearly four hours about the distribution of child sexual abuse material, sextortion and safety standards for kids using their platforms.

Committee chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., noted the packed gallery, which included victims and families from across the country advocating on behalf of kids who died by suicide after being sexually exploited online.

Canton mother Mary C. Rodee traveled to Washington this week to attend the hearing and meet with representatives about legislation to regulate social media. She carried with her photographs of her son, Riley K. Basford, a Potsdam Central School sophomore who died by suicide in 2021 after being sexually exploited for money on Facebook. Riley was 15.

Rodee and about a dozen others shared their losses in a video message that Durbin played during his opening remarks.

"How many more kids will suffer and die because of social media?" one family member said.

Much of the hearing involved committee members probing the five witnesses about existing company policies, data collection and whether they would support the committee's proposed legislation aimed at strengthening reporting avenues and government oversight.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, appeared as witnesses voluntarily. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap; Jason Citron, CEO of Discord; and Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, were issued congressional subpoenas.

It was Zuckerberg's eighth time testifying before a congressional committee on various industry matters since his first appearance in 2018, and Chew's second. Lawmakers directed much of their questioning to Zuckerberg, who in his opening statement touted Meta's parental control tools and the company's investments in safety policies.

In a moment of departure from Zuckerberg's measured style during previous hearings, he stood up and turned his back to lawmakers after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., during his questioning asked Zuckerberg if he would like to apologize to families who have lost loved ones because of sexual exploitation on Meta sites.

Facing the gallery, where families raised photographs of their loved ones, Zuckerberg said, "I am sorry for everything that you have gone through. It's terrible. No one should have to go through the things your families have suffered. And this is why we invested so much and will continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer."

Rodee said after the hearing that she wasn't impressed, calling Zuckerberg's apology and the responses from all the CEOs insincere and carefully prepared.

"Clearly Big Tech is not planning to clean this up," she said.

THE THREATS

Wednesday's hearing was nearly a year after the Judiciary Committee hosted representatives from social media safety groups, the American Psychological Association and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children among others. They described the escalation of threats to children, increasing reports of child sexual abuse material and the weaknesses of industry standards on safety for kids.

The National Center's president and CEO Michelle DeLaune testified last February that "we have reached an inflection point in our efforts" to address online child sexual exploitation.

"It is no longer feasible to rely solely on online platforms to adopt voluntary measures, especially given their near complete immunity for activity on their sites, or to hope that they will design their platforms to avoid precipitating dangers to children from sexual exploitation, enticement, and revictimization," DeLaune submitted in written testimony.

The National Center's CyberTipline, which launched in 1998, receives reports of suspected child sexual exploitation — 32 million reports in 2022, the most recent full year of finalized data.

Those reports are categorized by type, and child pornography accounts for about 31.9 million of the reports, or 99.5%. The remaining categories include "online enticement," where sextortion falls. The enticement category has generated more than 260,000 reports since 2016, and the number of reports involving sextortion more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, according to CyberTipline data.

Sextortion, as defined by the Cyberbullying Research Center, is "the threatened dissemination" of sexually natured images without consent. The threat is usually driven by the intent to obtain additional images, sexual acts or money.

Opening a Facebook account about two months prior to his death to browse snowmobiles for sale, Riley Basford accepted a friend request from a user posing as a teen girl. When Riley eventually shared personal photographs, he was given an ultimatum: pay $3,500 or the photos would be distributed to others.

Three months shy of 16 when he died on March 30, 2021, "he wasn't prepared for that kind of pressure," Riley's father Darren E. Basford said at the time.

Including two of Riley's siblings and other area teens, at least 15 young Facebook users they knew received the same friend request, the family recalled.

"I want to figure out how this devil was able to prey on my child in such a short time," Rodee said in 2021. "I am sure, and will be until I take my last breath, that he did not know what he was doing. He forgot all the things he knew about social media. He was alone and scared and he made a mistake, and he forgot to ask for what he needed."

Less than a month earlier, 18-year-old Shylynn M. Dixon, a junior at Heuvelton Central School, was also a victim of cyber sextortion. She died by suicide on March 3, 2021, after a Facebook user had issued similar threats for a year and a half, her family told the Times.

Durbin and the other Judiciary Committee members who spoke Wednesday are in agreement about the dangers of the unchecked social media industry. And although the committee has passed — unanimously — five bills over the last year that are intended to better protect kids, none of them have been called for a Senate floor vote.

"The tech industry alone is not to blame for the situation we're in. Those of us in Congress need to look in the mirror," Durbin said.

WHAT TO DO

The committee lawmakers are pushing a combination of solutions as the path forward. That combo, represented by the bills they passed last year, could include Big Tech industry standards that are more protective of kids, legislation that makes it easier to report and investigate exploitation, an open path to litigation and the creation of a federal agency to oversee the industry.

The existing legislative framework on web operators, like the five companies being examined now, was enacted in 1996 before social media became a permanent pocket fixture. Called Section 230 under the U.S. Code, it allows web companies to moderate content based on their own policies.

"This law immunized the then-fledgling internet platforms from liability for user-generated content. For the past 30 years, section 230 has remained largely unchanged, allowing Big Tech to grow into the most profitable industry in the history of capitalism, without fear of liability for unsafe practices," Durbin said.

Committee ranking member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said it's clear that Congress needs to "open up the courthouse door."

"Until you do that," he said, "nothing will change."

Graham vowed to turn up the pressure on his congressional colleagues to move forward with the committee's bills this year.

Meta submitted its own ideas for a legislative framework to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in November. Antigone Davis, Meta's vice president and global head of safety, pushed that framework earlier this month, arguing in a blog on Medium that parental controls should be required for kids younger than 16 when downloading apps and that parental controls should be offered for users younger than 16. The Meta framework also calls for establishing national legal standards for all apps and requiring ad-targeting standards that limit what information can be used for users younger than 16.

Meta already offers some parental controls, including the ability to set time restrictions on teenage users. In November, the company expanded supervision tools globally to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Horizon Worlds. Parents can schedule breaks for teenagers and access blocked contacts, for instance.

"I think these parents will tell you that stuff hasn't worked, to just give parents control," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told Zuckerberg during the hearing, later adding, "I just believe with all the resources you have, that you actually would be able to do more than you're doing. Or these parents wouldn't be sitting behind you right now."

A separate approach to solutions is being championed by Rodee with Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or Parents SOS, a group that organized an online presence this week ahead of the hearing. Parents SOS is primarily advocating for the Kids Online Safety Act, which the group describes on its website as "our best chance for long-term guardrails that will save lives."

KOSA has not received the same level of bipartisan support as the Judiciary Committee's other proposals. The nonprofit Fight for the Future counters on its website dedicated to opposing KOSA that the law would do more harm than good. Civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union are concerned about KOSA filtering out online resources and support groups, particularly for LGBTQ+ youth, according to the opposition site.

Rodee and other Parents SOS members are scheduled to meet with congressional representatives Thursday, including Rep. Elise M. Stefanik, R-Willsboro, about KOSA. Feeling disappointed with the social media companies' ideas of progress, Rodee said she's trying to remain optimistic.

"I will keep coming," she said, "but it's so disheartening to have to beg and hold up your dead kid's picture again and again."