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Child safety online: breaking point or tipping point?

Last week, as tech CEOs prepared to offer testimonies in front of a US Congressional hearing on child safety online, a hush descended in the room.

High above their heads, the grief-stricken families and friends held up pictures of lost loved ones. Some were the victims of online predators and others of cyberbullying and exposure to drugs online.

Throughout the nearly four hour testimony, the families impacted by the harms of social media made their presence felt and demands heard.

This week, in partnership with Project Liberty Alliance member Issue One, we’re exploring the breakdown in online safety for kids, and what it will take to build a safer web.

// Last week's Congressional hearing

Last Wednesday, members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee harangued the leaders of Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord in a hearing called to “examine and investigate the plague of online child sexual exploitation.”

• Democratic Senator Dick Durban blamed the tech executives for “creating a crisis in America.”
• Republican Senator Josh Hawley told Mark Zuckerberg, “Your product is killing people.”
• Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told the executives, “You have blood on your hands.”

Alix Fraser, Issue One’s Director of the Council for Responsible Social Media shared that Democratic and Republican senators found a common enemy in tech executives: “The hearing was an incredible moment that showed how Washington can actually work across the aisle.

We saw Senators Ted Cruz, Amy Klobuchar, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, Josh Hawley, and Alex Padilla all going after the CEOs with the same message: You are harming and even killing our kids. The American public can’t trust you, and we need responsible safeguards now.”

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87% of the electorate want government action to combat the harms being caused by social media platforms.

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// We're at a breaking point

• The online harms are manifold: From cyberbullying to child sexual abuse, and sales of drugs on social media platforms to harmful content sneaking past moderation filters, there is no shortage of risks. The recent raft of AI-generated pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift points to the ways that AI could exacerbate the online harms kids face.
• Exploitative business model: According to Fraser, “The business models of social media, and many other big tech companies, are built around the idea that we are the product. These companies own our data, own our digital personas, and own a huge piece of our lives.”
• Social media as a threat to democracy: Issue One’s recent report Dangerous by Design outlined how social media is a threat through the way deepfakes and false information exacerbate polarization and how social media enables foreign meddling in elections.
• Lack of regulation: Even though the lawmakers agreed on the harms, they don't always agree on the solution. There are six legislative proposals aimed at protecting children online that are waiting on Congress to act. The last federal bill to be passed was ​​SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) in 2018, which made it easier for victims of sex trafficking to sue online platforms. COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) already exists, but lawmakers are proposing a second version featuring greater protections (like raising the age of who is considered a kid from 13 to 16 and preventing platforms from targeting ads to minors). Another prominent bill, KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act), faces an uphill battle and resistance from some human rights and LGBT groups concerned about free speech and expression.

// How we got here

According to Fraser, there are a number of converging factors that brought us to this inflection point:

• Shield of immunity through Section 230: In the early days of the internet, tech leaders asked Congress to give them blanket immunity around the liability of their content, as a way to protect a growing industry. This protection came in the form of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and has given tech companies immunity from lawsuits for the harms they cause. The endurance of Section 230, which has survived court challenges in recent years, was a topic at last week’s hearings and was considered partially responsible for the harms that are allowed to perpetuate online.
• Strong lobbying: Big tech employs legions of lobbyists. According to an analysis from Issue One, Meta, ByteDance (owner of TikTok), X, Snap, and Discord combined to employ 142 lobbyists, or about one for every four members of Congress.
• No dedicated agency: There is no dedicated agency focused on overseeing and holding tech companies accountable. “This isn’t true of any other industry,” Fraser said. “After the Alaska Airlines incident last month, where no one died, the FAA grounded an entire fleet of planes and is making sure they are safe before allowing them to fly again.” Last year Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) proposed legislation that would establish a new commission to regulate online platforms.
• We don’t own our own data: According to Fraser, “Ownership of our data is at the heart of this problem.” Without it, users have few options to influence the governance and safety of these platforms.

// From breaking point to tipping point

Despite the size of this challenge, experts like Fraser are optimistic. Last week’s hearing was “an incredible moment that showed how Washington can actually work across the aisle.”

This is an auspicious sign, especially for those who see a connection between big tech and the ways big tobacco was eventually exposed and regulated. For years, tobacco companies employed lobbyists to kill any legislation that harmed their bottom line, but lawmakers realized that the public tide on cigarettes had shifted, and they forced tobacco companies to add warning labels, eliminate marketing to children, and impose other safeguards. 

For social media, the public and political sentiment is also shifting. 

• In a recent poll of US voters, 87% of the electorate want government action to combat the harms being caused by social media platforms, and 86% support KOSA, a bill with support from nearly half the Senate, and even from some tech companies like Snap, X, and Microsoft.
• Other leaders of big tech, like the CEO of Pinterest, are calling on their fellow tech executives to stop avoiding blame and do a better job of regulating themselves by making changes to platforms.
• Organizations like Issue One, Design It For Us, Fairplay, and ParentsTogether Action, who have been dedicated to this issue for years, are leveraging this moment to push for change.

Perhaps most importantly, the parents and family members in the room during the congressional hearings revealed that this issue has captured the public's attention. Is this the tipping point to create real change? Time will tell.

Project Liberty news

// Project Liberty executive chairman and founder Frank H. McCourt Jr. was on CNBC's show "Last Call" where he outlined the harms caused by social media. Watch here.

Other notable headlines

// 📚 According to an article in CNBC, OpenAI is partnering with Common Sense Media on an initiative to create AI education materials for teens and families.

// 👑 On the 20th anniversary of Facebook, an article in The Atlantic reflected on how Mark Zuckerberg is still Silicon Valley’s power broker.

// 🚔 Members of Congress are calling on the Department of Justice stop funding predictive policing, after an investigation by The Markup that found such policing to be discriminatory and inaccurate.

// 👤 After the recent campaign against Taylor Swift, an article from MIT Technology Review outlined three ways we can fight deepfake porn.

// 📱 An article in Tech Policy Press made sense of the latest research released lastweek by Pew on the use of social media by adults in the US.

// 🤖 Should we make our most powerful AI models open source? An article in Vox explored the debate around safety and democratization.

// 🕶 Attacks in the metaverse are booming, and police are starting to pay attention, according to an article in The Washington Post.

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