Sen. Josh Hawley asked on Wednesday that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta and founder of Facebook, issue an apology to the families of young Americans who suffered injury or committed suicide as a result of child sex exploitation on social media.
Who is Senator Hawley?
Senator Hawley is regarded as one of the top constitutional attorneys in the country. He has fought for the rights of the people via litigation in state courts, federal courts of appeals, and the US Supreme Court.
Before this, he successfully contested Obamacare in the Supreme Court as one of the primary attorneys in the historic Hobby Lobby case. Raised in rural Missouri, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley previously served as Missouri’s Attorney General
Senator Hawley has been a prominent supporter of working families in Congress ever since she assumed office. He has worked across party lines to provide online child protection. And he also made the META CEO apologize on Wednesday.
Mark Zuckerberg was accused of?
In a heated Senate hearing on online children’s safety, Mark Zuckerberg was accused of having “blood on his hands”.
Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, engaged Mark Zuckerberg in a contentious debate during a U.S. Senate hearing, questioning him about his steps to terminate staff, compensate victims, or extend an apology to the families of those affected by statements on social media. Then Mark Zuckerberg got up and apologized while facing the crowd and holding out photos of their loved ones.
Mark Zuckerberg replied, “I apologize for everything you have had to go through. It’s awful. Nobody ought to experience what your family has gone through. For this reason, we have made significant investments and will keep up our industry-leading work to ensure that no one has to endure the kinds of hardships that your families have had to endure.”
Hawley to sue big tech companies?
On Thursday, February 1, 2024, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declared that he would bring legislation granting victims of online sexual exploitation the ability to sue social media firms to the U.S. Senate floor the following week, demanding unanimous agreement.
Hawley will call for unanimous consent on legislation that gives victims of exploitation the right to sue big tech companies.
Apologies are nice, but it’s time for Congress to act. Next week I will go to the floor and ask unanimous consent to pass legislation giving victims of exploitation online the right to sue the platforms. We’ve had years of talk. Now is the time to make this law
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 1, 2024
A heated discussion took place in enate Judiciary Committee
The discussion took place during a high-profile hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where senators, both Democratic and Republican, chastised the CEOs of TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for their incapacity to effectively monitor social media platforms for the presence of content that poses a risk to minors.
How did parents react to the apology of Zuckerberg?
The testimony of the tech CEOs and Mark Zuckerberg’s apologies did not move some parents. San Antonio resident Maurine Molak said that her son David committed himself as a result of being harassed on Instagram and other applications.
David didn’t have anybody on his phone add him to a GroupMe the night before he passed away, and those individuals made disparaging remarks about his appearance and mental state. She stated that she was unmoved by what she had heard of Mark Zuckerberg regret.
The son of South Carolina state representative Brandon Guffey, whose 17-year-old son committed himself after receiving a threat via a picture of him in the nude, claimed that social media firms should be doing more to stop underage users from opening accounts.
Guffey criticized Mark Zuckerberg for his remarks, saying, “What I heard today was, especially from Mark Zuckerberg he’s a liar,” citing a 2023 research that found inconclusive evidence of social media’s detrimental effects on teenage mental health.
Graham, the South Carolina Republican, took it a step further. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean to, but you have blood on your hands,” Graham said.
Thus, though we have Musk’s apology, however, it is yet to be seen how Bigtech deals with the exploitation of children online after this heated hearing.
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