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“That is progress, my friends,” Durbin said.
However, the group largely remained silent, or demurred, when directly asked about their support for the full suite of laws. That included Yaccarino as well when Graham asked: “In English: Do you support the EARN IT Act, yes or no?” She declined to support it.
The EARN IT Act, sponsored by Graham, would curtail tech’s liability shield to allow individuals to sue tech companies for hosting child sexual abuse material. It has failed to advance to a floor vote for the last three Congresses.
Discord CEO Jason Citron, in his first Capitol Hill appearance, said the company is “not prepared to support” the STOP CSAM Act or the EARN IT Act, but does think Section 230 is a “very old law” that “needs to be updated.” (Minutes after Citron’s questioning, Discord sent a statement to POLITICO clarifying that the company supports “elements” of the STOP CSAM Act.)
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said he supported the Kids Online Safety Act, another stalled bill, which aims to stop platforms from recommending harmful material like suicide and eating disorder content. Snap was the first social media platform to back the bill, as
POLITICO first reported last week.
X’s Yaccarino said she’s supportive of the bill. “The Kids Online Safety Act should continue to progress and we will support the continuation,” she said earlier in the hearing. The CEOs of Meta, Discord, and TikTok gave waffling answers that they supported provisions of the bill, but didn’t fully back it.
The audience was full of victims of child exploitation, as well as families and parents whose children died due to bullying and drug sales on the social media platforms — 400 of whom
sent a letter to pressure Congress to act urgently to better protect kids on the sites. A number of families held framed photos as well as buttons and pins of their deceased children.
Despite the fresh energy, the hearing also came with a strong whiff of deja vu, with Zuckerberg making his eighth appearance on Capitol Hill, and
Chew his second.
Anxiety over China
A full second thread emerged over the day as Republican senators turned their focus to TikTok CEO Chew, repeatedly pressing him on whether the company sends data to China, his personal ties to the Chinese Communist Party and
reports that employees at its Beijing-based parent company can still access U.S. user information.
Chew, a Singaporean citizen — a fact the CEO emphasized to Cotton multiple times during a line of questioning into his background — repeatedly denied that his company is handing the Chinese government data to surveil Americans, and gave updates on the company’s
billion-dollar effort to keep Americans’ data on U.S.-based servers.
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