Pressure and our willingness to fight, and negotiate as if there is no fighting, if we are going to secure the release of these hostages alive. And ultimately bring peace to israel. We are going to leave the last few moments of this to hear the ceos testifying on child equitation. We have the ceos of meta. We also have evan spiegel. This is live coverage on cspan3. Members of the Senate Judiciary committee are arriving here with different ceos, talking about child sexual explication. The hearing comes amid roman concerns that social media is harming americas youth. The story says that the u. S. Surgeon general issued a Public Health advisory saying that social media use presents a profound risk of harm for teen and kids Mental Health. In written testimony, soderbergh Mark Zuckerberg announced that meta has introduced controls for how long children can use their services. We will hear from him, and the ceos of snap, tiktok, discord, and capital ask in a few minutes. Speaking on the Senate Judiciary committee will come to order. I think all those in attendance. I want to preface my remarks by saying i have been in congress for 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 Senate Judiciary committee will continue its work on an issue on the mind of most american families. How to keep our friends safe from Sexual Exploitation and harm in the internet age. Online child Sexual Exploitation includes the line of Online Platforms to target and groom children in the production and endless distribution of child sexual abuse material. Can haunt victims for their entire lives, and in some cases take their lives. Everyone will agree this conduct is abhorrent. I would like to turn to video to hear directly from the victims, the survivors, and the impact these crimes have had on them. I was sexually exploited on facebook. I was sexually exploited on instagram. I was sexually exploited on x. This is my daughter, olivia. Look at how beautiful miriam is. My son riley died from suicide after being sexually exploited on facebook. The child that gets exploited is never the same ever again. I reported this issue numerous times and it took over a decade before anyone helped me. You may be able to tell i am using a green screen. Why is that . In the 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, after being extorted for four consecutive years, i was Strong Enough to resist any more pictures but there are dozens more who are not. We got a phone call to find my son was in his room and suicidal. He was only 13 years old at the time. Him and a friend had been exploited online and trafficked. My son reached out to twitter or not x. The response was, thank you for reaching out. We reviewed the content and did not find a violation of our policy so no action will be taken at this time. How many more kids like matthew . Like olivia . Mike reilly . How many more kids will suffer because of social media . Big tech failed to protect my child from Sexual Exploitation. Big tech failed to protect me from Sexual Exploitation. And we need congress to do something for our children and protect them. It is not too late to do something about it. Online Child Exploitation is a crisis in america. In 2013, the National Center for missing and exploited children known as ncfmaec received 1080 cyber tips to day. Just 10 years later, the number of cyber tips has risen to 100,000 cyber reports a day. That is 100,000 daily reports of child sexual abuse. In recent years, we have also seen a explosion in the so called financial sextorition in which a person tricks a minor into sending photos or videos and threatened to release them unless the victim sends money. In 2021, nick make received a total of 129 reports of sextortion. 2021. In 2023, through the end of october alone, this 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 best selling cell phone was the motorola startac. While Ground Breaking at the time, the clamshell style cell phones not much different than the traditional phone. It allowed users to receive calls and send Text Messages but that was about it. Fast forward to today. Smart phones are in the pockets of seemingly every man, woman, and teenager on the planet. I would like to start with todays smart phones allow users to receive phones and text but they can also take photos and videos, support Live Streaming, and offer countless apps. With a touch of your finger, that smart phone can entertain and inform you, and it 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. There are carefully crafted algorithms and they can be a powerful force on the lives of our children than even the best intentions of the parent. Discord has been used to groom, abduct children. Metas instagram has helped to promote a network of pedophiles. Snapchat as disappearing messages have been coopted by criminals who financially extort the young victims. Tiktok has become a, quote, platform of choice for predators to access, engage, and groom children for abuse. And the prevalence of csam on x has gutted the safety workforce. Today, we will hear from the ceos of those companies. They are not only the companies that have contributed to this crisis but are responsible for many of the dangers our children face online. They are designed choices. They are failures to adequately invest in trust and safety. Their constant pursuit of profit over basic safety have put all our kids and grandkids at risk. Coincidentally, coincidentally, several of these companies implemented commonsense child safety improvements within the last week, days before their ceos would have to justify their lack of action before the 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 that motorola startac was flying off shelves and years before social media went mainstream, we passed section 230 of the Communications Decency act. This lot immunized the then fledgling internet platforms for user generated content. Interesting. Only one other industry in america has immunity from civil liability. We will leave that for another day. For years, section 230 has remained largely unchanged allowing big tech to grow into the biggest industry in the history of capitalism without fear for liability for unsafe practices. That has to change. Over the past year, this committee has unanimously reported five bills that would finally hold Tech Companies accountable for child Sexual Exploitation on their platforms. Unanimous. Take a look at the opposition in the Senate Judiciary committee and imagine if you will that if there is anything we can agree on unanimously that these five bills are the object of agreement. One of these bills is to stop csam act. It would lead victims through online providers who aid or abet Child Exploitation or who host or star csam. The stand against child Sexual Exploitation is bipartisan and absolutely necessary. Let this be a call to action that we need to get kids Online Safety legislation to the president s desk. I now turn to the Ranking Member senator graham. Thank you, mr. Chairman. This will answer the call. Every one of them. Ready to work with you and our democratic colleagues on this committee to prove to the American People that while washington is certainly broken, there is a ray of hope and it is here. It lies with your children. After years of working on this issue with you and others, i have come to conclude the following. Social Media Companies, as they are currently designed, and operates, are dangerous products. They are destroying lives, threatening democracy itself. These Companies Must be reined in, or the worst is yet to come. Gavin guffey is a representative republican representative from South Carolina. And the rock hill area. To all the victims who came and showed us photos of your once, dont quit. It is working. You are making a difference. Through you, we will get to where we need to go so other people will not have to show a photo of their family. The damage to your family has been done. Hopefully, we can take your pain and turn it into something positive so no one 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 did not give us money we are going to expose these photos. He gave them money but it was not enough. They kept threatening and he killed himself. They threatened mr. Guffey and his son. These wereby any known definition. Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us i know you do not mean for it to be so but you have blood on your hands. You have a product. You have a product that is killing people. When we had cigarettes killing people, we did something about it. Maybe not enough. You want to talk about guns, we have the atf. Nothing care. Theres not a thing you can do about it. You cant be sued. Now senator blumenthal and blackbird has been the dynamic duo here that found emails from your company where they warned you about the stuff. And you decided not to hire 45 people that could do a better job of policing this. So the bottom line is you cannot be sued. You should be. And these emails would be great for punitive damages, but the courtroom has closed every american abuse by all the companies in front of you. Of all the people in america we could give blanket Liability Protection to, this would be the last group. It is now time to appeal section 230. This committee is made up of the 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 lead to committee and they dye. Now, there is another approach. What you do with dangerous products . You either allow lawsuits, statutory protection to protect consumers, or you have a commission of sorts to regulate the industry in question. They take your license away. They find you. None of that exists 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 requests unanimous route 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. The only thing worse than me doing a bill with Elizabeth Warren is hardly 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 solid 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 products 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 18th congress, 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 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