‘I am sorry’: Hawley gets Zuckerberg to apologize for youth sexually exploited online

Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday asked Facebook leader and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to apologize to the families of young Americans who were harmed or died by suicide after online child sexual exploitation on social media.

In a heated exchange during a U.S. Senate hearing, Hawley, a Missouri Republican, asked Zuckerberg if he had taken any action to fire employees, provide compensation to victims or apologize to the families of people who were harmed by posts on social media sites.

Zuckerberg then stood up, turned to an audience holding up pictures of their loved ones, and apologized.

“I am sorry for everything that you have gone through,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things your family has 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 your families have had to suffer.”

Hawley then asked Zuckerberg, who was trying to explain steps Meta has taken to offer more protection for children and to hand more power to parents, whether he plans to set up a victim compensation fund for people harmed by his sites.

“Your job is to be responsible for what your company has done,” Hawley said. “You’ve made billions of dollars on the people sitting behind you here. You’ve done nothing to help them. You’ve done nothing to compensate them. You’ve done nothing to put it right. You could do so here today and you should.”

The exchange came in the middle of a high-profile hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the CEOs of TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram gathered for a series of scoldings by both Democratic and Republican senators over the technology companies’ inability to better police social media sites for hosting content that harms children.

Some parents weren’t moved by the apology by Zuckerberg or the testimony of the tech CEOs.

Maurine Molak, from San Antonio, said her son David died by suicide after he was bullied on Instagram and other apps. On the night before he died, David was added to a GroupMe by people he didn’t have in his phone where they made derogatory comments about his looks and his mental health. She said she wasn’t moved by what she could hear of Zuckerberg’s apology.

“He was sorry about what happened to our kids, but he didn’t really take ownership of his responsibility as the CEO of the company where a lot of these harms occur,” Molak said.

Molak has been pushing for the Senate to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that requires social media companies to offer features to protect children.

Brandon Guffey, a state representative in South Carolina who’s 17-year-old son died by suicide after being extorted with a nude photo, said the social media companies could do more to prevent people exploiting teens from having accounts.

“What I heard today was, especially from Zuckerberg, he’s a liar,” Guffey said, criticizing a 2023 study Zuckerberg cited that said there was not conclusive evidence that social media had a negative impact on the mental health of adolescents.

The CEOs attempted to tout their companies efforts to protect children, either through settings that prevent children from being contacted by strangers and limit what content they’re exposed to and their efforts to work with law enforcement to track down pedophiles and drug traffickers.

The hearing comes as part of a push among some members of Congress to pass tougher laws regulating the tech industry. Most social media sites are still governed by a 1996 law that gave blanket protection to tech companies from lawsuits over content posted to their sites. The law has been credited with helping the booming tech industry in Silicon Valley, but has left people who suffer from content posted on the sites frustrated from their lack of legal avenues.

The Judiciary Committee has passed several bills aimed at increasing protections for children who use social media, particularly when it comes to child sexual exploitation, including some that take aim at revising Section 230.

“For all the upsides, the dark side is too great to deal with,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. “We do not need to live like this in America.”

None of the CEOs expressed support for all five bipartisan bills the Judiciary Committee has passed in an effort to address child sexual exploitation online, and to offer victims the ability to hold social media companies accountable.

Some of the CEOs expressed support for individual bills, including the Cooper Davis Act, which would create standards requiring social media companies to report any information they have on someone who illegally provides drugs on their platform to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, and named for a 16-year-old Kansan who died by a drug overdose after taking a pill laced with fentanyl that he purchased on Snapchat.

Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, said he supports the bill because he thinks it would empower the DEA to cut down on drug trafficking. Spiegel also apologized to parents whose children died of drug overdoses from pills they were able to buy on Snapchat.

But while the Judiciary has been able to pass several pieces of legislation through committee with the support of hard-line Republicans and liberal Democrats, none of the bills have received a vote on the Senate floor.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has expressed support for passing legislation to regulate generative artificial intelligence, but efforts to increase regulations on social media companies have fallen flat. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, suggested that Schumer would have to “go to Amazon” and “buy a spine” in order for the legislation to get a vote.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that he hopes that will change, saying he wanted the hearing to be a “call to action.”

Graham, the South Carolina Republican, took it a step farther.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean to, but you have blood on your hands,” Graham said.