Tech companies should be held accountable

Watching the hearing held by the U.S Senate Committee on the Judiciary on the issue of online child sexual exploitation reaffirmed my opinion that Congress should take action against tech companies for their negligence in fighting the growing prevelance of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their platforms. 

On Jan. 31, the Committee held a hearing involving five CEOs: Shou Chew of TikTok, Jason Citron of Discord, Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, Linda Yaccarino of X, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. After the companies gave their testimonies, the Committee asked questions and expressed their concerns on the growing crisis on their platforms. In response, the CEOs shared their stances and appealing efforts they’ve made, from Meta creating over 30 safety tools over the past eight years to Snapchat releasing “Family Center” as a tool for parents to use and keep their children safe.

While these measures appear helpful, they’ve proven to be ineffective at preventing sexual exploitation of children online as many of their measures are optional. Additionally, many companies don’t conduct in-depth investigations when cases do arise, and simply provide reports to nonprofits such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) that essentially become part of a statistic.

Tech companies have only been encouraged and pressured during mainstream incidents to take measures to protect their users. After decades of free rein from liability following the passing of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in 1996, this Committee unanimously voted for five bills that would require the tech companies to act. 

Under Section 230, tech companies are immunized from legal action, creating no persistent incentive for strong moderation on their platforms. The five bills seek to limit this immunization. They include the STOP CSAM Act, EARN IT Act, REPORT Act, SHIELD Act of 2023, and Project Safe Childhood Act. They would all contribute to the ultimate goal of prevention and reporting of CSAM by not only reducing the liability protections that the tech companies have but also clarifying guidelines around confronting CSAM possession, creation, and distribution. 

The bills would impose new requirements and warnings for the platforms by allowing the public to sue them for harm done, as well as requiring studies of their platform for transparency with Congress and revealing what needs improvement. 

“The larger point is that platforms need to hand over more content about how the algorithms work, what the content does, and what the consequences are, not at the aggregate, not at the population level, but the actual numbers of cases so we can understand the content,” said committee member Chris Coons.

Congress passed Section 230, along with many other regulations, to encourage the innovation and expansion of the Internet. It was enacted in 1996, three years after the publication of the World Wide Web. Since then, the Internet has grown over hundred-fold, reaching over 5.3 billion users. With an increasing amount of people, online platforms will carry greater responsibility over ensuring the safety and security of their users. If the five bills are passed, they will yield great results and prove to be a step in the right direction.