Francesca Gillett
Live reporter

The questions from US lawmakers for tech bosses came thick and fast earlier - and there were plenty of punchy one-liners from senators.

It marked the first time many of the tech executives had testified before Congress. But not for Meta's Mark Zuckerberg - it was his eighth time and he faced the brunt of the questions as he was challenged over what Instagram and Facebook are doing to protect children online.

The most dramatic point was when Zuckerberg was essentially forced into apologising to family members in the room, many who say their children have been harmed as a result of social media use or content.

TikTok's boss Shou Zi Chew was also in the firing line, facing a grilling about whether his company shared US users' data with the Chinese government, which he denied.

Will this change anything? Let's see. As our correspondent Nomia Iqbal writes, Congress has only passed one children’s safety law in the last decade. But this hearing stood out compared to others - because of the families in the room.

To read our latest story, that's here.

Liv McMahon
Tech reporter

Image source, EPA

Social media industry analyst Matt Navarra tells me what he saw of today’s Senate hearing was fairly on brand, with “lots of US political grandstanding” and a perfect photo opportunity provided with Mark Zuckerberg’s dramatic apology.

And he says the question of what happens next, and what exactly will come of this hearing, is also typically unclear.

“We’ve seen these hearings time and time again and they have often, so far, led still to not actually generate any significant or substantial regulation.

"We're in 2024 and US has virtually no regulation, as was pointed out during the hearings, with regards to the social media companies.”

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, Getty Images

This hearing stood out compared to others - and that's because of the families.

There were many people inside the room who say their loved ones were harmed by social media - their presence at the hearing was a huge force to be reckoned with. In fact it transformed it in many ways.

From the outset, they made their feelings known, hissing when the CEOs entered.

They provided reaction throughout key moments including applause and laughter when lawmakers threw tough questions.

At times it felt as if they fuelled those attacks, as we saw in the most dramatic moment when Mark Zuckerberg got up and turned around to apologise to the families for their suffering.

One of the big questions hanging over this hearing was, will anything actually be done?

Congress has only passed one children’s safety law in the last decade. But the presence of families, the faces of tragedy, gave this extraordinary get together, a greater sense of urgency.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Big Tech hearings come and go - and then nobody follows up. But this one had a bit more edge to it than others we’ve seen.

Congress has not taken major steps on online child safety in about 25 years and many lawmakers at this hearing noted the body is long overdue for action while also noting there is a clear bipartisan desire to act.

There is a range of bipartisan legislation that the Senate can now choose to act on, including the Kids Online Safety Act and the Stop Child Sexual Abuse Material Act.

The hope was that this hearing could add momentum to these individual pieces of legislation. On my way out of the hearing room, one advocate inside the room said aloud she felt there had been “progress” made.

Some of these bills, however, have come up for consideration before and have not advanced through Congress. This is also an election year, a period when legislative activity crawls to a standstill amid political posturing.

The Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA) was a key talking point in today’s Senate hearing.

The bill, which is currently going through Congress in the US, is designed to protect young people from harm online.

If it becomes law, companies who own online platforms, like social media, would have to bring in measures to tackle online bullying and sexual exploitation against minors.

Platforms would also have to introduce safeguards which restrict companies from collecting personal data - as well as allowing parents or guardians access to children’s privacy and account settings.

But critics say the bill could censor the internet.

Some say it may restrict access to LGBTQ+ content or suicide prevention resources.

Plus, they say that it would require big tech companies to monitor users’ activities more closely to make sure they aren’t looking at anything that breaks the rules.

This brings up the issue of privacy.

That was a session that pulled no punchespublished at 19:09 Greenwich Mean Time 31 January

19:09 GMT 31 January

Zoe Kleinman
Technology editor

These were angry lawmakers. And this being a Senate hearing, you tended to hear a lot more from the senators than you did from the people they were talking to.

It’s fair to say Mark Zuckerberg took most of the heat.

There were plenty of robust questions too for TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew about China.

The exec who got off most lightly was Linda Yaccarino from X – to be honest there were times when I almost forgot she was there. Although X did say last week that less than 1% of its users are children.

But ultimately, what happens next?

The lawmakers have so far been unable to take forward various proposed legislation, and the tech companies promise ever more tools and investment in protecting children, while there are always more tragic stories of times when it all fails in the worst possible ways.

I’ve sat through several of these hearings over the years. I’d like to think this is the last, because nobody wants more children to be harmed.

But as we’ve seen over the last three hours, there’s no quick fix.

Earlier during the hearing, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana began his probing questions of Mark Zuckerberg by warning he might “wax a little philosophical”.

His questions ranged from asking if Meta’s business model was based on having “convinced over two billion people to give up all of their personal information… in exchange for getting to see what their high school friends had for dinner” to whether its user terms “still suck”.

Zuckerberg said he disagreed with these descriptions, but continued to face questions from the Senator - who accused the platform’s tracking practices as placing it “in the foothills of creepy”.

The Facebook founder and Instagram owner defended its photo sharing app as not harmful to teens.

“If you think that Instagram is not hurting millions of our young people… you shouldn’t be driving - it is,” the senator replied.

The Senate hearing has just wrapped up after nearly four hours of testimony from five of the biggest leaders in the tech industry.

Stick with us, we have some analysis and further details from the hearing still to come.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, US Senate Committee

Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, who co-sponsors the Kids Online Safety Act, claims Mark Zuckerberg views young users simply as a way to make more money.

She pointed out that the company had once said it could make a profit of $270 per 13-year-old user.

Three people in the crowd stood up, all wearing black T-shirts with white lettering that reads: "I'm more than $270".

"Children are not your priority. Children are your product," Blackburn alleges, to a smattering of applause.

She claims Meta's "army of lawyers and lobbyists" had opposed changes that would make children safer.

"The door is open. Come to the table," she says to an ovation inside the room.

"You need to work with us. Kids are dying."

Senator Thom Tillis just threatened to shut down tech companies which fail to appropriately moderate content.

“We could regulate you out of business if we wanted to,” he says.

But he says he accepts there are good aspects of social media.

He talks about how his 92-year-old mother uses Facebook to connect with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But he asserts that social media is dangerous in the hands of children.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your children have a deadly weapon. They have a potentially deadly weapon. Whether it’s a phone or a tablet, you have to secure it," he says.

He finishes by inviting the tech bosses to collaborate on the various bills Congress is trying to pass on online safety.

"If you got a problem with them, state your problem, let's fix it," he says.

"No is not an answer."

Image source, Reuters

TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew was asked by Senator Tom Cotton earlier if he recognised the name of Chase Nasca - a 16-year-old from New York who died by suicide in 2022 after allegedly seeing more than a thousand posts about violence and suicide on TikTok.

The parents of Chase Nasca, Michelle and Dean Nasca, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance in March 2023 and travelled to Washington DC to attend a congressional hearing where Chew was testifying.

Bloomberg reported , externallast April that Chase Nasca’s TikTok account remained active - more than a year after his death - and harmful content, including posts glorifying suicide, were still being recommended to the account.

When asked by Senator Cotton today if he was aware of the lawsuit, Chew said he was.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis asks each tech boss how many people they employ to moderate content on their platforms.

It's a moderators job to identify harmful content on platforms and remove it.

The responses – remembering that each platform has vastly different numbers of users - are:

• Meta: 40,000
• X: 2,300
• TikTok: 40,000
• Snap: 2,000
• Discord: “Hundreds of people”

Zoe Kleinman
Technology editor

Image source, EPA

I’ve just been shown some Instagram Reels, which are on the platform right now, of some very young-looking children.

Reels are short videos. In some, the children – mostly girls - ask to be “rated” in terms of their attractiveness. One of those has been viewed nearly 400,000 times.

Others share how old they were when the pandemic started – some say they were as young as five years old, which would make them no more than eight or nine now.

Mark Zuckerberg has just testified to Congress that children below the age of 13 are not allowed on the platform, and are removed.

Arturo Bejar used to work at Instagram’s parent company Meta but then blew the whistle over what he felt was a refusal of the firm to build effective tools to protect young people.

He is watching the hearing, and he told me he believes the harm that has been, and still is being caused, is “eminently preventable”.

Image source, EPA

“Mr Speigel, I see you hiding down there. What does yada yada yada mean?” Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy says.

It’s an unconventional start to his questions to Snap boss Evan Spiegel.

Spiegel says he’s unfamiliar with the term.

“I’ve heard a lot of yada yada yada-ing,” says Kennedy.

He suggests that what the tech bosses are saying today is all talk and no action.

“The reforms you’re talking about to some extent are going to be like putting paint on rotten wood,” he adds.

He then turns to the power he believes tech companies hold.

“You're not companies, you're countries. You're very, very powerful," Kennedy says.

“And you… have blocked everything we have tried to do, in terms of reasonable regulation. Everything from privacy to child exploitation.”

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, Reuters

One of the most intense moments so far came from Senator Ted Cruz, who used his final two minutes to focus his attacks on TikTok.

He quizzed CEO Shou Zi Chew on the company’s data practices.

As Chew began claiming TikTok does not share user information with China, Cruz loudly interjected “I don’t believe you”.

Cruz then claimed TikTok users are blocked from seeing some content that may be censored by the Chinese government. He says there was a ratio of 2:1 of posts bearing #TaylorSwift or #DonaldTrump on Instagram versus TikTok.

He says that rises to 57:1 for #TiananmenSquare.

He poses the question why users are censored from details of the Tiananmen Square protests on TikTok.

Chew says the statistics Cruz is pointing to have been debunked, but is spoken over when Cruz pointedly asks: “What happened at Tiananmen Square?”

"Senator there was a massive protest during that time," Chew responds, insisting TikTok does not block content based on Chinese censorships.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Capitol Hill

We are now back from a break, and we are now hearing questions from Senator Alex Padilla.

Let's quickly examine why this hearing has covered several topics in addition to child safety - including China, fentanyl and antisemitism.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill don't get much time to address Big Tech executives and hold them to account.

Today has been a good example of what it is like on those rare occasions it does happen.

While this hearing is ostensibly focused on the issue of child sexual exploitation online, senators have grilled the witnesses on various related topics including data privacy content moderation, the Chinese government and even China's treatment of Ughyurs.

And, as they often do, they have rattled off difficult questions and demanded the witnesses answer in brief, preferably saying yes or no.

But the five witnesses - particularly Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew, both of whom have endured this kind of grilling before - have attempted to respond with careful answers that have satisfied nobody.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, Getty Images

We're revisiting some of the fiery exchanges that took place over the past couple of hours while the hearing is on a break.

Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton opened his questioning time by asking: “Is TikTok under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party?”

Cotton pressed Shou Zi Chew on his past work for the Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi and on him living in Beijing for five years during that tenure.

He prodded Chew to comment on his quick transition from Xiaomi to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, questions whether he has any existing Chinese allegiances or a Chinese passport, and asks whether he has yet applied for US citizenship.

Chew politely tried to explain that he is Singaporean and does not work for Chinese interests or toe the CCP line on political issues.