“You know full well that your product is a disaster for teenagers,” Hawley asserted, citing Instagram’s internal research. Hawley then asked Zuckerberg six times by my count who he fired for allowing young people to be harmed. “37 percent of teenage girls ages 13 to 15 were exposed to unwanted nudity on Instagram in a week,” Hawley said. “You knew about it. Who did you fire?”
Mr. Zuckerberg knows better than anyone that Mr. Hawley’s purpose was more a political performance art display than an investigation. However, the technology entrepreneur said he would not bite and would not take questions. Of course, the issue at hand was to solve the problem, not to decide who would be punished for actions that reflected Meta’s product strategy.
But that’s the point where I lost sympathy for Zuckerberg, and the point where I started to understand what Hawley was saying. “Senator, I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about personnel decisions,” Zuckerberg said during his election campaign, using the same kind of nonsense he uses with journalists when executives don’t want to answer questions. He wooed an official who had been arrested. Zuckerberg responded to the Legislature’s provocation with corporate bombast, reminding me that he didn’t need my sympathy.
Mr. Hawley then asked Mr. Zuckerberg, the billionaire, whether his company had compensated victims, including the parents of teenagers who committed suicide. Mr. Zuckerberg responded that he didn’t believe that, and began explaining that his company’s job was to build tools that addressed the concerns at hand. But then Hawley persuaded him, and this time they cut to the heart of the matter. “It’s about making money,” Hawley said twice, implying that no matter what tap-dancing Zuckerberg was up to, all the tech giant really cared about was profits.
Mr. Zuckerberg, who turns 40 in May, is no longer the innocent Silicon Valley man-child he once was. His hair was longer than when he last appeared in Congress, giving him the air of a weary mogul who has been through it all. These regular Washington show trials are just part of the price of doing business.
And he wasn’t the only technology executive to live up to this honor. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), doing his best resemblance to the late Joseph McCarthy, asked TikTok CEO Xiang Zhi Chu if he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Ta. “I’m Singaporean,” Chew replied.
All of this is yet another reminder that governments can no longer just go along with the industry crowd. Smokers, at least, have long been warned by the U.S. Surgeon General that smoking is dangerous. Last year, the Surgeon General issued recommendations linking social media and mental health concerns. Does the hardware and software that impacts our lives (and our children’s lives) in all sorts of ways come with any warnings or caveats?
Not until today. And the only thing Silicon Valley gets every time it comes to Washington is usually nothing. Both Congress and President Biden have been vocal about the issue of social media, but have done little about it. Repeated efforts to weaken the liability shields that benefit big tech companies and measures specifically aimed at protecting children have failed to pass Congress despite bipartisan support.
The funny law that protects Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and more is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This law was enacted in 1996 to protect then-new Internet companies from liability for the content on their sites. The thinking at the time was that the emerging industry needed help to compete with established telephone and cable companies.
But the days when giant corporations in places like California need protection are long gone. Instead, they have effectively lobbied to block efforts to tweak or repeal Section 230. They rightly argue that such a move would hurt their business. At the end of the day, this is about money.
That was pushed back at Wednesday’s hearing by protesters wearing T-shirts that read “I’m worth more than $270,” a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general. This is a reference to a disclosed internal meta-email that claims that “the lifetime value of a human being is $270.” [13-year-old] Teens are about $270. ” As sneaky as it sounds, this is just a standard business deal, meaning Meta assumes he can collect a total of $270 from all of his teenage users over their lifetime. But this shows exactly how the company views its customers.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) made the best point about both the failure of Congress to act and the fact that it’s actually getting the attention of tech executives like Zuckerberg. “Unless we open the doors of the courts, nothing will change,” she said, referring to civil litigation. “Money talk is even more powerful than what we talk about here.” Truer words have probably not been spoken all day.