Big Tech companies push new initiatives ahead of CEO hearing

Several of the major technology companies whose CEOs are slated to appear before Congress on Wednesday have announced new initiatives or positions on efforts to protect children’s safety online ahead of this week’s hearing.

The heads of Discord, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and X, the company formerly known as Twitter, are set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about efforts to counter child sexual exploitation on their platforms.

Snap, the developer of Snapchat, endorsed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) on Friday, becoming the first major social media company to back the bipartisan bill. 

The legislation would require social media companies, like Snapchat, to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive features and opt out of algorithmic recommendations. 

Meta released its own framework for federal legislation to “support parents and protect teens online” earlier this month.

The framework proposes that app stores be required to verify user ages and obtain parental approval for teen app downloads and that the industry develop standards on age-appropriate content and ad targeting for teens.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram also announced a new partnership with the Center for Open Science on Monday to share data with academic researchers who study topics related to well-being.

X revealed on Friday that it plans to build a new “Trust and Safety center of excellence” and “hire more in-house agents” to combat the presence of exploitative material on the platform. According to Bloomberg, the company intends to hire 100 full-time content moderators.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino also made the rounds on Capitol Hill last week, meeting with more than half a dozen senators to discuss the social media platform’s efforts to address child sexual exploitation, Axios reported.

Yaccarino and the other four CEOs are likely to face a grilling from lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing, as the issue of child sexual exploitation online and children's online safety more generally has drawn widespread bipartisan concern.

“Since the beginning of this Congress, our Committee has rallied around a key bipartisan issue: protecting children from the dangers of the online world,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement in November.

“It’s at the top of every parent’s mind, and Big Tech’s failure to police itself at the expense of our kids cannot go unanswered,” Durbin and Graham added at the time.