Rep. Lori Trahan Grills Big Tech CEOs

Yesterday, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a former tech startup executive and member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, grilled Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about their companies' efforts to target children to further grow their platforms' usership.

Key Excerpts:

Trahan: Google and Facebook are not only doing a poor job of keeping our children under 13 off of YouTube and Instagram, as my colleagues have already mentioned today, but you are actively onboarding our children onto your ecosystem with apps like YouTube Kids, Facebook Messenger Kids, and now we're hearing Instagram for Kids. These applications introduce our children to social media far too early and include manipulative design features intended to keep them hooked.

Trahan: Will the recently reported Instagram app for Kids have endless scroll enabled? Yes or no?

Zuckerberg: Congresswoman, we are not done finalizing what the app is going to be. We're actually still pretty early in designing this.

Trahan: Are you not sure? Or are you not sharing features? Look, another feature of concern is the filter that adds an unnatural but perfect glow for my 10-year-old to apply to her face. Is that feature going to be a part of Instagram Kids?

Zuckerberg: Congresswoman, I don't know. I haven't discussed this with the team yet.

Trahan: Please expect my office and many others to follow up. Given what we know about Instagram's impact on teen mental health, we're all very concerned about our younger children.

Trahan: This committee is ready to legislate to protect our children from your ambition. What we're having a hard time reconciling is that while you're publicly calling for regulation -- which by the way comes off as incredibly decent and noble -- you're plotting your next frontier of growth which deviously targets our young children and which you all take great strides, with infinitely more resources, in protecting your own children.

This playbook is familiar, as some of my colleagues have already pointed out. It's the same tactic we saw from alcohol companies and big tobacco -- start "em young and bank on them never leaving -- or at least never being able to. But these are our children and their health and well-being deserve to take priority over your profits.

Source