Mark Zuckerberg was one of several social media bosses accused of having “blood on [their] hands” at a hearing where companies were criticised for not doing enough to protect children from being exploited on their platforms.
Mr Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, faced a sea of people who held pictures of their dead children all affected by online harms.
Also at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing were the chiefs of X, Linda Yaccarino, Snap Inc’s Evan Spiegel, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Discord’s Jason Citron.
The room was first shown a video of children speaking about their victimisation on social media and senators recounted stories of young people taking their lives while being extorted after sharing photos with sexual predators.
Senator Lindsey Graham said: “Mr Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands.”
Referring to the founder of Facebook specifically, Mr Graham said: “You have a product that’s killing people.”
Mr Zuckerberg apologised to the families present, saying: “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.
“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.”
Advertisement
Instagram, which is operated by Meta, was further denounced as one of its features included alerting a user to an image that might show sexual abuse but allowed them to see it anyway.
Mr Zuckerberg responded that it can be helpful to redirect users to resources rather than blocking content. He reiterated the company had no plans to pursue a previous idea to create a child version of the app.
Meta has said it will block harmful contentfrom being viewed by under-18s, and will instead share resources from mental health charities when someone posts about their struggles with self-harm or eating disorders.
The 39-year-old chief executive has faced a committee before, with the first being over a privacy scandal in 2018 for Cambridge Analytica.
It is only the second time for Mr Chew and the first for Ms Yaccarino.
X has faced heavy criticism since Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, and this week has been embroiled in a deepfake scandal, when sexually explicit pictures appearing to show Taylor Swift went viral.
Her name was temporarily unsearchable as the platform sought to redress the situation.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:11
Online victims write to tech bosses
What did the other chiefs have to say?
The boss of X said the company did not cater to children and the firm supported the STOP CSAM Act, a bill which facilitates restitution for victims of child exploitation.
It is one of several aimed at addressing child safety – but none have become law.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s chief executive was grilled on the app’s potential detriment to the mental health of children.
Mr Chew insisted his platform made “careful product design choices to help make our app inhospitable to those seeking to harm teens”, reiterating the enforcement of a policy that would ban children under 13 from using the app.
He also said TikTok would spend $2bn (£1.57bn) on trust and safety measures.
Discord’s boss said safety tools already existed on its platforms, adding it had worked with NGOs and law enforcement to protect children.
Before the hearing, Mr Spiegel, the chief executive of Snap Inc, which operates Snapchat, said the company would back a bill to hold apps and social media platforms legally accountable if they recommended harmful material to children.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
Much has been said about the students whose protests have gripped America this past week.
Their cause has been framed in polarising ways. A violent Hamas-sympathising mob? Or peace activists striving for equality?
Within a frenzied spectrum of views and noise, one young student sat down with me for a conversation.
Aidan Doyle, 21, is a philosophy and jazz double major at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was arrested early on Thursday morning for being part of an encampment at the university.
He told Sky News he was shocked that the police arrested so many student protesters, despite not intervening in an attack on the protesters by a pro-Israeli group the day before.
He said his arrest had not deterred him from continuing his protest, which he likened to the Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s.
More on California
Related Topics:
Mr Doyle rejected the notion, from President Biden, that the protests are not peaceful.
“Graffiti, putting posters up, that’s all peaceful,” he said, commenting on the president’s statement from the White House.
Advertisement
“I also think that President Biden needs to actually take some introspection and realise that maybe the reason so many of these protests are happening is partially due to him.”
Mr Doyle added: “Protests in general are part of the American spirit. They’re part of being an American. And if we were to just stand around in circles and sing and dance, and pretend everything was fine, then nothing would change and nobody would care at all.
“Part of a protest is causing disruption and causing at least a minor level of chaos that is, again, not violent but that actually disrupts things.”
He denied any accusations of antisemitism, but conceded there is a spectrum of opinion within the movement.
“If you’re going to criticise a movement, I think you have to look at the movement’s goals and their mission, not what fringe members of the group say or do.
“You have to actually look at what we say, what the organisers say, and what is in the mainstream, and what our mission and our goal is: the peace and prosperity of the Palestinian people.”
Asked if he believed in Israel’s right to exist as a country, he said: “I think Jewish sovereignty is incredible. I think it’s an amazing thing.”
He added: “I think that if there is a country for Jewish people that protects the Jewish people, that is of utmost importance, especially with the vile and rampant antisemitism that exists across the world that I see every day and that I try and combat as much as possible.
“But doing that and then simultaneously repressing another group of people, dehumanising them and brutalising them, then the question of whether your state has the right to exist becomes secondary.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
More on California
Related Topics:
From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
Advertisement
They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:17
Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.