MARK Zuckerberg has been mercilessly warned there is "blood on his hands" for not doing enough to safeguard kids online.
The Meta CEO was dished the damning criticism by Sen. Lindsey Graham during a fiery congressional hearing that saw him and other social media big wigs come under fire from lawmakers on Wednesday.
Zuckerberg was just one of five social media giant CEOs that testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the hearing called “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.”
CEOs from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord, and X, formerly known as Twitter, attended the hearing recorded by C-SPAN.
This included Meta CEO Zuckerberg, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord CEO Jason Citron.
Senator Lindsey Graham said Zuckerberg and the others have “blood on your hands” due to children who have lost their lives due to situations tied to social media, the Associated Press reported.
The hearing also highlighted how it was found that internal Meta documents suggested it estimated each teen user to be worth $270 to the platforms.
Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
“Social media companies as they are currently designed and operate, are dangerous products,” Graham said during the hearing.
“They’re destroying lives threatening democracy itself.
“These companies must be reined in.
“Or the worst is yet to come.”
'BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS'
Graham noted he is sure the "blood" is unintentional, but that something needs to be done to get control of it.
“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,” Graham said.
“You have a product, that’s killing people.
“When we had cigarettes killing people, we did something about it, maybe not enough.
“You’re going to talk about guns, we have the ATF.”
Graham ended the statement and said, “Nothing here,” referring to nothing protecting lives when it comes to social media.
“There’s not a damn thing anybody can do about it.
“You can’t be sued."
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy went on to claim Meta platforms have become a "killing field of information" where users "see only one side of an issue" - points vehemently rejected by Zuckerberg.
"You have convinced over 2 billion people to give up all of their personal information - every bit of it - in exchange for getting to see what their high school friends had for dinner Saturday night," Kennedy said.
"And you take this information, this abundance of personal information and then you develop algorithms to punch people's hot buttons ... again and again and again, to keep them coming back and to keep them staying longer.
"As a result, your users see only one side of an issue, and so to some extent, your platform has become a killing field for the truth, isn't it?"
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30 янв 2024
