The U.S. is preparing to soon address the cases around online children safety mounting against Big Tech firms. The Capitol Hill has reportedly send summons to the CEOs of companies including Meta, TikTok, Alphabet, and Snap for a meeting in June.
At the invitation of Senator Chuck Grassley, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai will be joining Evan Spiegel and Shou Zi Chew at the U.S. legislative centre in Washington DC sometime next month, the official handle of the Senate Judiciary Republicans posted on Friday. Grassley, a Republican senator from the state of Iowa, presently serves as the chairperson of the Senate Judiciary.
The Senate’s Judiciary Committee is looking to hold detailed discussions around the existing lags in child and teen safety on social networking platforms with these tech CEOs in a rather public setting.
An array of issues inlcuding minors’ data collection, the online circulation of child sexual abuse material, instances of cyber-bullying, and suicidal ideations could emerged as topics of discussions between the U.S. regulators and the invited tech honchos.
According to government figures, at least 21 percent of the total U.S. population of over 343 million is under 18. Despite the massive prolifiration of social networking sites primarily among people of aged 18 and under, many lawmakers argue that the lack of comprehensive regulatory guardrails to keep the minor Internet users safe, are threatening their safety.
A bunch of proposed bills including the Kids Online Safety Act, the Chilfren and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, and the Kids Off Social Media Act remain stuck amid revisions, markups, and floor delays for years.
Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal are now trying to get the Senate committees of Judiciary and commerce to back urgent reforms in the social media regulations and ensure that Big Tech firms take more accountabilitu of how their platforms are impacting minors.
This upcoming June meeting with the top tech leaders, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be bringing these concerns under the spotlight in a rather public setting. The hope is that as the U.S. defines its regulations in the coming times, tech giants take voluntary steps to keep the minor users of their social networking applications safer.
The Reuters report has claimed that Meta, Snap, Alphabet, and TikTok are individually facing “thousands” of lawsuits over allegations of not prioritizing the mental health of children with appropriate measures.
Just this month, streaming giant Netflix was sued in Texas over allegations of making its platform addictive for minors and secretly collecting their personal data for targeted recommendations and advertisements. The lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeks upto $10,000 per violation of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ claim that the platform “does not collect anything”.
For now, the exact date for this Capitol Hill meeting with the tech titans remain undisclosed.