By Miles Klee, November 20, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senators say Elon Musk’s company and Discord both tried to refuse subpoenas but were served by U.S. Marshals<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ON DEC. 6,\u00a0CEOs from some of the biggest\u00a0social media<\/a>\u00a0platforms will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee<\/a>, where they are set to face tough questions about what their platforms are doing to keep children safe from sexual exploitation and abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sens. Dick Durbin<\/a> and Lindsey Graham<\/a> on Monday announced the bipartisan subpoenas of three executives who have reportedly been less than communicative with Congress about the issue of child sexual exploitation on their apps: Linda Yaccarino, head of X (formerly Twitter<\/a>), Snap<\/a> CEO Evan Spiegel, and Discord<\/a>\u2018s Jason Citron. Two other prominent tech executives \u2014 Shou Zi of TikTok<\/a> and Meta<\/a>\u2018s Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> \u2014 are expected to appear voluntarily, as the committee is currently in discussion with both companies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBig Tech has failed to police itself \u2014 at the expense of our kids,\u201d tweeted Durbin in announcing the subpoenas. \u201cWe\u2019re informing our legislative push to protect kids online.\u201d In a follow-up post, he reiterated that the CEOs would \u201chave their chance to explain their failures to protect kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The senators\u2019 joint press release noted that both X and Discord have been particularly resistant to negotiations on sending leadership to Washington. \u201cIn a remarkable departure from typical practice,\u201d it said, \u201cDiscord and X have further refused to cooperate by accepting service of the subpoenas on behalf of their CEOs, requiring the Committee to enlist the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service to personally serve the subpoenas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n X owner\u00a0Elon Musk<\/a>\u00a0and his supporters have frequently claimed success in eradicating child sexual exploitation and abuse from the platform, but in reality, the company has struggled to\u00a0get a handle on the problem<\/a>\u00a0since Musk gutted its\u00a0child safety team<\/a>. By some indications, X has actually gotten worse on this front: In June, the Stanford Internet Observatory\u00a0discovered<\/a>\u00a0posts containing known images of\u00a0child sexual abuse<\/a>\u00a0material that should have been automatically flagged and filtered out. In July, Musk also\u00a0reinstated the account<\/a>\u00a0of a far-right conspiracy theorist who was suspended for posting child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Musk has been quick to lash out at people and institutions critical of how he runs X, he did not immediately tweet about the subpoena or child safety on Monday, though he did engage with<\/a> a user pushing the Pizzagate<\/a> conspiracy theory, which rests on the false claim that political elites run a child sex ring out of the basement of a D.C. pizzeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chat app Discord, an NBC News investigation<\/a> revealed in June, has been used by a variety of sexual predators who prey on children, with at least \u201c35 cases over the past six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications\u201d on the platform. Sextortion scams targeting minors have also been an issue. \u201cAs a parent, it\u2019s horrifying,\u201d Citron said in response<\/a> at the time, insisting that Discord takes the threat \u201cvery seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Snapchat, meanwhile, has reportedly seen a\u00a0rise in child exploitation<\/a>\u00a0since 2020. Meta was\u00a0sued earlier this year<\/a>\u00a0by investment funds that own stock in the company for allegedly not doing enough to combat sex trafficking or the sexual exploitation of children. And\u00a0some TikTok accounts<\/a>\u00a0have been found to act as portals to child sexual abuse material. Across the industry, there is also growing concern about the threat of\u00a0AI-generated explicit material<\/a> that harms adolescents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust and safety teams were among those impacted by a wave of\u00a0Silicon Valley layoffs<\/a>\u00a0over the past year, further reducing the social platforms\u2019 abilities to combat hate speech, misinformation, and abuse amid a\u00a0war in the Middle East<\/a>\u00a0and ahead of a\u00a0U.S. presidential election<\/a>. Whatever the Senate Judiciary Committee learns about moderation shortcomings in December, it may just be the tip of a very big iceberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Senators say Elon Musk’s company and Discord both tried to refuse subpoenas but were served by U.S. Marshals<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Miles Klee, November 20, 2023 Senators say Elon Musk’s company and Discord both tried to refuse subpoenas but were served by U.S. Marshals ON DEC. 6,\u00a0CEOs from some of the biggest\u00a0social media\u00a0platforms will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where they are set to face tough questions about what their platforms are doing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14943,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14942\/revisions\/14943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}