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WASHINGTON (AP) — YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat are only offering “reviews and minor changes” to their operations to keep young users safe amid growing concerns about the platforms’ potential harm to children, a Senate panel chairman told the companies. Managers Tuesday.
“Everything you do is add more eyeballs, especially kids, and keep them on your platforms longer,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said at the start of a hearing by the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection. he makes head.
The panel recently took the testimony of a former Facebook data scientist who revealed internal research showing that the company’s Instagram photo-sharing service is seriously hurting some teens. The subcommittee focuses on examining other tech platforms with millions or billions of users vying for the attention and loyalty of young people.
“We’re hearing stories of the same damage” caused by YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat, Blumenthal said.
“This is a Big Tobacco moment for Big Tech… This is a moment of reckoning,” he said. “There will be responsibility. It’s different this time.”
Three executives – Michael Beckerman, TikTok vice president and head of public policy for the Americas; Leslie Miller, vice president of government and public policy at Google, owner of YouTube; and Jennifer Stout, vice president of global public policy at Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., testified at the subcommittee hearing.
“In the first three quarters of 2021, we transacted on more than 7 million accounts when we learned that these might belong to a user under 13 – 3 million of them in the third quarter alone – as we accelerated our automated removal efforts,” Miller said.
Beckerman said TikTok has tools like screen time management to help teens and parents manage how much time kids spend on the app and what they see. “We are committed to working hard and keeping the platform safe,” he said.
The company says it’s focusing on age-appropriate experiences, noting that some features, like direct messaging, aren’t available for younger users. The video platform, wildly popular with teens and toddlers, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. In just five years since its launch, it has gained an estimated 1 billion monthly users.
The three platforms weave into the fabric of teens’ lives, often influencing their clothing, dance moves, and diets, potentially to the point of obsession. Peer pressure to enter applications is strong. Lawmakers say social media can offer entertainment and education, but the platforms are misused to harm children and encourage bullying, vandalism, eating disorders and manipulative marketing in schools.
The panel wants to learn how algorithms and product designs can magnify harm to children and encourage addiction and privacy intrusions. The aim is to develop legislation to protect young people and to give parents the tools to protect their children.
The company says it stores all TikTok US data in the United States. The company also rejects criticism of the promotion of content harmful to children.
Earlier this year, the platform tightened up its privacy practices for the under-18 crowd after federal regulators ordered TikTok to disclose how its apps affect children and teens.
A separate House committee investigated the YouTube Kids video service this year. Lawmakers said the YouTube branch was feeding children-inappropriate material “in the wasteland of slow, consumer content” so it could serve ads to them. Featuring both video hosting and original shows, the app is available in around 70 countries.
A panel of the House Oversight and Reform Committee told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki that the service isn’t doing enough to protect children from potentially harmful material. In a letter to panel chair Wojcicki, he said instead he relied on creators’ artificial intelligence and self-monitoring to decide which videos would make it onto the platform.
Parent company Google has agreed to pay $170 million in 2019 deals with the Federal Trade Commission and the state of New York, alleging that YouTube collects personal data about children without the consent of their parents.
Despite the changes made after the placements, YouTube Kids still shows ads to kids, the MP’s letter said.
YouTube says it’s trying to provide kids and families with protections and parental controls like time limits to limit viewing to age-appropriate content. He emphasizes that the 2019 deals include the primary YouTube platform, not the children’s version.
Snap Inc.’s Snapchat service allows people to send photos, videos and messages that need to disappear quickly; this is an appeal for younger users who want to avoid spying on parents and teachers. Hence the “Ghostface Chillah” faceless (and wordless) white logo.
Snapchat, which is only 10 years old, says 90 percent of 13-24 year olds in the US use the service. It reported 306 million daily users in the July-September quarter.
In 2014, the company agreed to settle allegations that the FTC deceived users about how effectively the shared material disappeared, and that it collected users’ links without telling them or without their permission. Messages known as “snapshots” can be saved through third-party apps or other means, the editors said.
Snapchat hasn’t been fined, but has agreed to create a privacy program that will be monitored by an outside expert over the next 20 years – similar to the surveillance that’s been applied to Facebook, Google, and Myspace in privacy agreements in recent years.
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