By Lorenzo Billie
The Senate Commerce Committee just wrapped up another three-hour hail about social media’s effect on children and teens. But the rearmost hail was different from former bones in an important way it featured representatives from TikTok, Youtube and Snap.
Though the three apps are some of the most popular apps among teens and youngish druggies, all three have gotten lower attention from lawgivers than Facebook and indeed Twitter. It was the first time TikTok and Snap had appeared at such a hail. All three companies tried to head off review by drawing distinctions between their platforms and Facebook, which has lately drawn comparisons to tobacco companies. And each company promised new features to ramp up maternal controls and other child protections on their service YouTube VP Leslie Miller said the company was working on a new point that would allow parents to “ choose a locked dereliction autoplay setting” in the YouTube Kiddies app, in addition to other new maternal controls. She did n’t give farther detail, but said it would launch “ in the coming months.”
Snap also said it was working on new features for parents, with Jennifer Stout, the company’s VP of Global Public Policy, saying the features would be “ rolling out veritably soon.” She said the update would allow parents to view information about how their children are using Snapchat, similar as who they spend the utmost time drooling with and what their sequestration and position settings are TikTok said it would add fresh controls to allow parents and children to more customize their feeds, but was light on specifics. “ We are investing in new ways for our community to enjoy content grounded on age felicitousness or family comfort,” said Michael Beckerman, the company’s VP of Public Policy, “ We are developing further features that empower people to shape and customize their experience in the app.”
But the legislators of the Commerce Committee sounded unimpressed by these pledges. Throughout the hail, they pushed the companies on issues like algorithmically- boosted content about eating diseases and tone detriment on YouTube and TikTok. Snap’s Stout was pushed on what the company is doing to stop medicine dealers on its platform.
Several Democratic legislators also pushed Beckerman on TikTok’s ties to Chinese parent company ByteDance, and how it handles US stoner data. In one particularly memorable exchange, Senator Ted Cruz said Beckerman was dodging questions about TikTok’s cooperation with a company called Beijing ByteDance Technology, which reportedly has links to the Chinese government. Beckerman also veered questions about what data TikTok collects by saying Facebook and Instagram collect further data about druggies than TikTok does.
Though Facebook was n’t officially part of the hail, exposures from whistleblower Frances Haugen were substantiated several times. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who at a former hail said Facebook and other companies were facing a “ big tobacco moment,” said that “ tech isn’t irredeemably bad like big tobacco But he said that the companies need to do much further than prove they’re “ different” from Facebook. “ I understand from your evidence that your defense is‘we ’re not Facebook, ’” he said. “ Being different from Facebook isn’t a defense. That bar is in the gutter. It’s not a defense to say that you’re different.”
james