Meta’s Zuckerberg apologizes to victims in tense D.C. hearing: ‘I’m sorry for everything you’ve gone through’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, facing pressure from lawmakers during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, apologized to parents, who say their kids suffered or even died due to content on Facebook’s platforms.

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through. It’s terrible,” Zuckerberg said, after turning to the audience and away from his microphone. “No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.” 

Zuckerberg, along with X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and other leading social media executives are facing a grilling from senators who are concerned about child exploitation and safety on their services. Zuckerberg’s apology came after Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked if the Meta CEO had compensated victims’ families

Zuckerberg, clearly rattled, said “Senator my job is to make good tools.”

The tech executives are in Washington on Wednesday alongside TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Discord CEO Jason Citron, as witnesses at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about safeguarding children on their respective platforms.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have blasted the companies, saying they have failed to properly address what some have called a “plague of online child sexual exploitation” on social media apps. The goal of the hearing is to inform legislation that members of Congress believe is needed to compel the firms to do more to protect children on their platforms.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you have blood on your hands,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an opening statement that drew applause.

In November, committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking member Graham said that they issued subpoenas to Yaccarino, Spiegel and Citron to testify at the hearing.

Wednesday’s hearing is focused specifically on issues pertaining to child exploitation and the prevalence of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, on social media. But the overarching theme is that these tech companies are underregulated and have designed and built platforms that are addictive and that damage the mental well-being of children and young adults.

So far, news of the Senate hearing and related child-safety lawsuits haven’t caused too much concern to investors in companies such as Meta, which is trading near a record. Any proposed regulation of the companies will require time to pass in Congress and come into effect, if it happens at all.

In recent months, Meta has been hit with a number of lawsuits related to the well-being of children on its apps Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico’s attorney general filed a civil suit against Meta in December, alleging that the company’s apps are enabling sexual predators to exploit children and distribute CSAM and that the company failed to address the problem because its leadership was more focused on growth.

That lawsuit was filed shortly after a bipartisan group of more than 40 attorneys general filed a joint federal lawsuit alleging that Meta knowingly designed addictive apps that are detrimental to children’s mental health and have contributed to problems such as teenage eating disorders.

Meanwhile, Meta, Snap, TikTok and Alphabet, via YouTube, face ongoing multidistrict litigation involving a coalition of school districts and individuals who also allege the companies’ products are addictive and harmful to the mental well-being of children and young adults.

One of the bills that lawmakers are proposing as a possible solution to child exploitation problems includes the Stop CSAM Act, which would let victims of online child sexual exploitation sue “tech platforms and app stores that promoted or facilitated the exploitation, or that host or store CSAM or make it available,” according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Lawmakers have also been pushing the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which would establish a so-called “duty of care” for tech firms that requires them to provide more parental controls and undergo annual audits intended to assess their platform risks to children and young adults, among other tasks.

Still, privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have voiced concerns over these proposed bills, and are worried that they could lead to the censorship of reproductive rights and other sexual health and orientation information and potentially compromise the privacy of minors via unnecessary surveillance.

The social media executives are detailing their efforts combating child exploitation on their platforms, which include working with law enforcement and tasks such as proactively identifying potential predators.

Zuckerberg described Meta’s online child safety-related efforts, saying the company has around “40,000 people overall working on safety and security” and that the company has invested over $20 billion on those efforts since 2016.

Zuckerberg said Meta invested $5 billion in 2023 alone on these safety efforts.

“We’re committed to protecting young people from abuse on our services, but this is an ongoing
challenge,” Zuckerberg said. “As we improve defenses in one area, criminals shift their tactics, and we have to come up with new responses. We’ll continue working with parents, experts, industry peers, and Congress to try to improve child safety, not just on our services, but across the internet as a whole.”

Spiegel detailed some of the initiatives Snap has undertaken to safeguard children on its messaging platform. Spiegel, differing from Zuckerberg, also pledged support for KOSA and the Cooper Davis Act, which would require communications firms to report instances involving various drug-related offenses to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We support this legislation, not only in word, but in deed, and we have worked to ensure our service lives up to the legislative requirements before they are formal, legal obligations,” Spiegel said. “This includes limiting who can communicate with teens to friends and contacts only, offering in-app parental tools, proactively identifying and removing harmful content, and referring lethal drug content to law enforcement.”

Chew also echoed some of Zuckerberg’s comments, saying in his opening statement that “safety is one of the core priorities that defines TikTok under my leadership.”

“We currently have more than 40,000 trust and safety professionals working to protect our community globally,” Chew said. “And we expect to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety efforts this year alone.”

Like Spiegel, Yaccarino voiced support for KOSA during her opening statement, while also saying she supports the Stop CSAM Act.

Meta CFO Susan Li said in July that there are “broadly speaking, increasing legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the US that could significantly impact our business and our financial results.” But so far, those “regulatory headwinds” haven’t affected the company’s sales too much, and investors have been mostly pleased with the company’s cost-cutting efforts, which helped the company’s shares reach a record high earlier in January.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report