Mark Zuckerberg testifies YouTube screenshot
Mark Zuckerberg apologized for all of the problems that his Meta/Facebook empire has caused people, sort of. The apology, as it was, came during testimony the Facebook founder gave before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.
But the most interesting part of the day’s events came before he even testified. Mark Zuckerberg found himself surrounded by the family members of people who died due to circumstances that were in some way connected to social media. This included those who died of overdoses after seeing ways of acquiring illicit drugs through such services as well as the relatives of people who committed suicide after social media platforms led them to information on how to kill one’s self after writing about thinking of suicide.
The people held up posters with pictures of their late loved ones.
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Mark Zuckerberg stood and turned towards all of the people behind him in the gallery and said, “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much, and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”
Bridgette Norring, a mother whose son died from an accidental fentanyl overdose after ordering a pill off of Snapchat, was not impressed by Mark Zuckerberg’s performance. She told CNN, “It lacked any heart. I think he could have done better in his apology to us.”
“I just feel like for them [the social media companies], our children are just casualties, pawns, in this game to make money,” Norring added.
And the American senators were not impressed by Mark Zuckerberg’s words either.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R, South Carolina) told him and other social media executives, “You have blood on your hands. You have a product that’s killing people.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R, Texas” simply asked, “Mr. Zuckerberg, what the hell were you thinking?”
Another Senator threatened that the government could “regulate you out of business if we wanted to.”
Discord CEO Jason Citron, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and X CEO Linda Yaccarino all joined Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in appearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
One of the problems raised at the hearing is that the companies, by law, have effective immunity from civil suits based on content posted to their services by their users. They are currently immune from any liability and so cannot be sued. So, the senators said they were considering changing this, but any new regulations would only apply to what comes in the future and nothing that already happened could be actionable.
Also, most observers say that Mark Zuckerberg and the rest have little to worry about as Congress is not really expected to do much.
