The most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. The ceos of meta, tiktok, and x talk about efforts to stop Child Sexual Exploitation online before the Senate Judiciary committee. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, the Top Republican on the committee, was critical of the companies, accusing them of having blood on their hands. Later in the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents who had lost children because of a social mediarelated incident. This is just over three and and a half hours. [gavel bangs] this meeting of the Senate Judiciary committee will come to order. I want to preface my remarks by saying that i have been in congress a few years. Senator graham has as well. If you do not believe this is an idea whose time has come, take a look at the turnout here. Today, the committee will continue its work on an issue on the mind of most American Families how to keep our kids safe from Sexual Exploitation unharmed in the internet age. Online Child Sexual Exploitation includes the use of Online Platforms to target and groom children and the production and endless distribution of child sexual abuse material, which can haunt victims for their entire lives and in some cases take their lives. Everyone here will agree this conduct is abhorrent. I would like to turn to a brief video to hear directly from the victims, survivors of the impact survivors about the impact these crimes have had on them. I was sexually exploded on facebook. I was sexually exploded on instagram. I sexually exploded on x. Look at how beautiful miriam is. My son riley died from suicide after being sexually exploded on facebook. And child who has been sexually exploited is never the same ever again. I reported this issue numerous times, and it took over an decade before anyone helped me. You might be able to tell that im using a green screen. Why is that . In an internet world, my past abusers can contact me. Fans of my abuse material as a child can find me and contact me. As a 17yearold child, i read an impact statement after being extorted for four consecutive years. My son was in his room and suicidal. Hes only 13 years old. I found out him and offend friend have been exploited online. We contacted twitter or now x. The response was thank you for reaching out. We reviewed the contact the content and did not find a violation of our policy, so no action will be taken at this time. How many kids like matthew like olivia like riley how many more kids will suffer and die because of social media . They failed to protect my child from Sexual Exploitation. We need congress to do something for our children and protect them. It is not too late to do something about it. Online Child Sexual Exploitation is a crisis in america. In 2013, the National Center for missing and exploited children received approximately 1380 cyber tips per day. By 2023, just 10 years later, the number of cyber tips has risen to 100,000 reports a day. Thats 100,000 daily reports of child sexual abuse material. In recent years, we have also seen an explosion in the socalled financial sextortion in which a predator uses a fake social media account to trick a miner into sending explicit photos and videos and threatens to release them unless the victim sends money. In 2021, 139 reports were made of sex torsion. In 2023, the number skyrocketed to more than 22,000. More than a dozen children have died by suicide after becoming victims of this crime. This disturbing growth in Child Sexual Exploitation is driven by one thing changes in technology. In 1996, the worlds bestselling cell phone was the motorola startac. While groundbreaking at the time, it was not much different than a traditional phone. It allowed users to make and receive calls and even receive text messages, but that was about it. Fastforward to today. Smartphones are in the pockets of seemingly every man, woman, and teenager on the planet. Todays smartphones allow users to make and receive calls and texts, but they can also take photos and videos, support livestreaming, and offer countless apps. With the touch of your finger, that smartphone can entertain and inform you, can become a back alley where the lives of your children are damaged and destroyed. These apps have changed the ways we live, work, and play, but as investigations have detailed, social media and messaging apps have also given predators powerful new tools to sexually exploit children. Carefully crafted algorithms can be a more powerful force in the lives of our children than even the most best intentioned parent. Discord has been used to groom, abduct, and abuse children as instagram helped promote a network of pedophile. Snapchats disappearing messages have been coopted by criminals to financially extort young brighams. Tiktok has become a platform of choice for predators to access, engage, and groom children for abuse, and the prevalence of cs am on x comes as the company has goaded its trust and safety workforce. Today, we speak with ceos of those companies, not only to companies that have contributed to the crisis, but they are responsible for many of the crimes we see online. Their design choices, their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have put our kids and grandkids at risk. Coincidentally, several of these companies implement it common sense child safety improvements within the last week, days before their ceos would have to justify their lack of action to this committee, but the Tech Industry alone is not to blame for the situation we are in. Those of us in Congress Need to look in the mirror. In 1996, the same year the motorola startac was flying off shelves, and years before social media went mainstream, we passed section 230 of the Communications Decency act. This law immunized then fledgling internet platforms from liability for usergenerated content. Interesting only one other industry in america has immunity from civil liability. We believe that for another day. 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. That has to change. Over the past year, this committee has unanimously reportedivhold Tech Companies ae for child sexual exultation on their platforms. Take a look at the membership of the Senate Judiciary committee and imagine if you will, if theres anything we can agree on unanimously. These five bills achieved agreement. One of these bills, the stop csam act, takes a stand against online Child Sexual Exploitation. Its bipartisan and absolutely necessary. Let this hearing be a call to action. We need to get kids Online Safety legislation to the president s desk. The republicans will answer the call. All of us. Everyone of us is ready to work with you and our democratic colleagues on this committee to prove to the American People while washington is certainly broken, there is a ray of hope, and it is here. After years of working on this issue with you and others, ive come to conclude the following social Media Companies as they are currently designed and operate art dangerous products. They are destroying lives, threatening democracy itself. These Companies Must be reined in, or the worst is yet to come. Kevin duffy is a republican representative from South Carolina in the rock hill area. Two other victims who came and showed us photos of your loved ones, dont quit. Its working. To all the victims who came and showed us photos of your loved ones, dont quit. The damage your family has been dealt, hopefully we can take your pain and turn it into something positive so nobody else has to hold up a sign. Gavins son got online to instagram and was tricked by a group in nigeria that put up a young lady posing to be his girlfriend and as things go at that stage in life, he gave her some photos, compromising sexual photos, and it turned out that she was part of a Extortion Group in nigeria. They threatened the young man that if you dont give us money, we will expose these photos. He gave them money, but it was not enough. They kept checking, and he killed himself. These are bass towards these are bastards by any known definition. Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, i know you dont mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands. [cheers and applause] you have a product thats killing people. When we had cigarettes killing people, we did something about it. You want to talk about guns, we had the atf. Nothing here. Theres not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Senators blumenthal and blackburn have been like the dynamic duo here. Have found emails from your company where they warn you about this stuff, and you desired decided not to hire 45 people that could do a better job of policing this. The bottom line is you cannot be sued. You should be, and these emails would be great for punitive damages, but the courtroom is closed to every american abuse by all the abused by all of the companies in front of us. It is now time to repeal section 230. This committee is made up of ideologically most different people you could find. We have come together through your leadership, mr. Chairman, to pass five bills to deal with the problem of exploitation of children. I will talk about them in depth in a little bit. The bottom line is all these bills have met the same fate. They go nowhere. They leave the committee and they are done. Now theres another approach what do you do with dangerous product . You allow lawsuits, you have statutory protections, or you have a commission of sorts to regulate the industry in question. They take your license away if you have a license. They find you. None of that exists here. They fine you. None of that exist here. We live in a america in 2024 where there is no regulatory body dealing with the most profitable Biggest Companies in the history of the world. They cannot be sued, and theres not one law in the book that is meaningful protecting the american consumers, and other than that we are in a good spot. So here is what i think is going to happen. I think after this hearing today, we are going to put a lot of pressure on our colleagues. Leadership in the republican and Democratic Senate to let these bills hit the floor and vote. And im going to go down starting in a couple of weeks, make unanimous consent requests to do cspan. Do the csam. Do all the bills. Become famous. I am going to give you a chance to become famous. Now Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham have almost nothing in common. I promised i would say that publicly. [applause] the only thing worse than me doing a bill with Elizabeth Warren is her doing a bill with me. We have sort of parked that because elizabeth and i see an abuse here that needs to be dealt with. Senator durbin and i have different political philosophies but i appreciate what you have done on this committee. You have been great so to all my democratic colleagues thank you, very, very much. To all of my republican colleagues, thank you very, very much. Save the applause for when we get a result. This is all talk right now. But there will come a day when we keep pressing that we get the right answer for the American People. What does that answer . Accountability. Now, these products have an upside. They have enriched our lives in many ways. Mr. Zuckerberg, you have created a product i use. The idea that i think when you first came up with it to be able to talk your friends and family and have a place where you can talk your friends and family about going on things in your life. There is an upside here. But the darkside has to be dealt with. It is now time to deal with the darkside because people have taken your idea, and they have turned it into a nightmare for the American People. They have turned it into a nightmare for the world at large. Tiktok. We had a great discussion about how maybe Larry Ellison could protect american data from Chinese Communist influence. But tiktok, the representative in israel, quit the company, because tiktok is being used in a way to basically destroy the jewish state. This is not just about individuals. I worry that in 2024, our democracy will be attacked again through these platforms by foreign actors. We are exposed. And a. I. Is just starting. So to my colleagues, we are here for a reason. This committee has a a history of being tough, but also doing things that need to be done. This committee has risen to the occasion. There is more that we can do but to the measures of this committee, lets insist that our colleagues rise to the occasion, also. With the hundred and 18thcongress, we have the votes that can fix this problem. All you can do is cast your vote at the end of the day, but you can urge the system to require others to cast their vote. Mr. Chairman, i will continue to work with you and everybody on this committee to have a day of reckoning on the floor of the United States senate. Thank you, senator graham. Today, we welcome five witnesses who i will introduce. Jason cintron, the ceo of this court, inc. Mark zuckerberg, the founder and ceo of meta. Evan siegel, the cofounder of snap inc. I will note for the record that mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Chu are appearing voluntarily. I am disappointed that our other witnesses have not done that. The others are here pursuant to subpoenas and mr. Cintron on the excepted service after u. S. Marshals were sent to discords headquarters at taxpayer expense. I hope this is not a sign of your commitment or a lack of commitment to addressing the serious issue before us. After the witnesses, each witness will have five minutes to make a statement. Senators will ask questions any opening ground for each of seven minutes. I expect to take a short break at sometime during questioning to allow the witnesses to stretch their legs. If anyone is in need of a break at any time please let my staff know. Before i turn to the witness side, i would also like to take a moment to acknowledge that this area has gathered a lot of attention as we expected. We have a large audience. The largest i have seen in this room today. I want to make clear as with other Judiciary Committee hearings, we ask people to behave appropriately. I know there is high emotion in this room for justifiable reasons, but i ask you to please follow the traditions of the committee. That means no standing, shouting, chanting, or applauding witnesses. Disruptions will not be tolerated. Anyone who does disrupt the hearing will be asked to leave. The witnesses are here today to address a serious topic. We want to hear what they have to say. I think you for your cooperation. Can all the witnesses please stand to be sworn in. You confirm the testimony you are about to give before the committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . So help you god . Let the record show that all witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Mr. Citron, please proceed with your opening statement. Good opening statement. Good morning. My name is Jason Cintron and i am the cofounder and the ceo of discord. We are an American Company with about 800 employees living and working in 33 states. Today, this court has gone to more than 150 million monthly active users. Discord is a Communications Platform where friends hang out and talk online about shared interests, from Fantasy Sports to writing music to video games. I have been playing video games since i was five years old. And as a kid, that is how i had fun and found friendship. Me of my fondest memories are playing video games with friends. We built this court so that anyone can build friendships playing video games from minecraft to wordle and everything in between. Games have always brought us together and discord made it happen today. Discord is one of the Many Services that have revolutionized how we can locate with each other and the different moments of our lives. Imessage zoom, gmail, and on and on. They create communities, accelerate commerce, healthcare, and education. Just like with all technology and tools, there are people who exploit and abuse our platforms for immoral and illegal purposes. All of us here on the panel today, and throughout the Tech Industry have a solemn and urgent responsibility to ensure that everyone who uses our platform is protected from these criminals, both online and off. Discord has a special responsibility to do that because a lot of our users are young people. c more than 60 of our active users are between the ages of 13 and 24. That is why safety is built into everything we do and is essential to our mission and our business. And, most of all, this is deeply personal. I and a dad with two kids. I want this court to be a product that they use and loved. And i want them to be safe on discord. I want them to be proud of me for helping to bring this product to the world. That is why i am pleased to be here today to discuss the important topics of the Online Safety of miners. I have written testimony and it provides a comprehensive overview of our safety programs. Here are a few examples of how we protect and empower young people. First, we put our money into safety. The tech sector has a reputation of Larger Companies buying smaller ones to increase user numbers and