Mark Zuckerberg addressed relatives of online child abuse victims on the Senate floor Wednesday, a first for the Meta CEO and a unique moment in a morning of tense exchanges during a Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, turning his back on the bipartisan panel of senators and family members, many of whom were holding photos of their dead loved ones. “No one should have to go through what your families have gone through.”
Mr. Zuckerberg added that the company was continuing to work on the issue to prevent other families from going through similar experiences.
The moment came after a tense exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri. The senator pressed Mr Zuckerberg on a range of issues, including what he said was Meta’s failure to act adequately on what he called rampant exploitation and abuse of children across the social media company’s many apps – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger .
Mr Zuckerberg drew some of the most scrutiny from senators during the wide-ranging hearing on children’s online safety, at which the chief executives of X, Snap, Discord and TikTok also testified. He was pressed on issues such as the content of child sexual abuse and whether he supported proposed legislation to stop it.
Mr. Zuckerberg strongly defended his company’s actions, noting during the hearing that it has authorized more than $20 billion to safeguard the platform and hired tens of thousands of employees.
But he also said that running Meta inherently means compromises, trying to enhance good experiences — facilitating connections between friends, loved ones, celebrities and interests — and mitigating bad ones. Senators questioning him stressed that he should focus the company’s efforts on doing a much better job in the latter category.
Before Mr Zuckerberg spoke to the gallery, Mr Hawley asked if Meta would offer any compensation to the families of dead children who were abused on the platform, adding that “your product is killing people”. Mr Zuckerberg did not directly answer the question. Most of Mr. Hawley’s questions were directed at the chief executive.
“Your job is to be accountable for what your company has done,” Senator Hawley said before Zuckerberg stood to address the chamber. “You’ve made billions of dollars from the people sitting behind you here. You did nothing to help them, you did nothing to compensate them, and you did nothing to fix it. You could do it here today, and you should.”
After Mr. Zuckerberg finished speaking, family members in the Senate gallery fell silent.
Afterward, Mary Rodee, a parent in the courtroom, said she and other victims’ parents were incredulous about Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments to them. She said she waited two years for an answer from Meta about the death of her son, who she said took his own life in 2021 after being sexually exploited on Facebook Messenger.
“Companies are not doing enough,” he said. “Enough talking.”
Cecilia Kang contributed reporting from Washington, DC;
