Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, testified for the first time before the U.S. Congress on Wednesday. He refused at the hearing. Commit to permanently terminate the plan to create an Instagram version for children under 13 years of age.
In testifying to the Consumer Protection Business Subcommittee under the Senate of Congress, Mosseri stated that he was the final decision maker in this matter, and said that he would work to ensure that children aged 10 to 12 years old would not get the explicit consent of their parents.
Cannot access any version of the Instagram platform. He also said that Instagram wanted to create a child-focused product. The initial goal was to solve the problem of children under 13 who want to use the app and the difficulty of verifying age on various platforms in the industry.
Although the leaked internal documents made parliamentarians angry and believed that Instagram lacked practical actions to protect children’s safety, Mosseri said in the opening remarks of the hearing that he still contributed to the platform’s efforts on this issue. Feel proud.
Industry solutions alone may be difficult to achieve goals
In his prepared speech, he stated that protecting young people’s cybersecurity is not just a company’s business and emphasized the need for industry-wide solutions and standards. He also pointed out that Instagram has been calling for a renewal of regulations for many years, and has proposed the establishment of an industry body to formulate the best practices around how to verify the age online and design the age-appropriately.
The chairman of the Senate Consumer Protection Business Subcommittee, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal (Richard Blumenthal) made it clear in his opening remarks that, in his view, industry solutions alone cannot achieve goals. of. Self-regulation depends on trust. Blumenthal said. And trust is gone.
Mosseri’s attendance at the hearing was based on the fact that former Facebook employee Frances Haugen previously released a large number of internal research documents to reporters, Congress and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These studies found that the report has Among teenagers with suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the roots of such thoughts to Instagram.
But when he testified on Wednesday, Mosseri questioned the accuracy of this number. In his written comments, he stated that the media reports on the aforementioned internal research were distorted. These reports prompted congressional members of both parties to convene a series of hearings, including a hearing attended by Hao Jian, and a hearing attended by a Facebook executive to testify, but Mosseri was the company after the news broke. The highest-level executives who testify.
Urgent release of product updates raises questions
Just in the early morning of the day before the hearing, Instagram has just released multiple product updates aimed at improving the safety of teenagers on the platform, including reminding teenagers to “take a break” after using the app for a period of time, and allowing Parents view and limit the time they spend on the platform, etc.
A senior member of the Consumer Protection Business Subcommittee and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, expressed doubts about the timing of Instagram’s announcement of the update. At 3 o’clock in the morning, which is midnight in Silicon Valley, you released a list of product updates, claiming that this will raise the standards for protecting teenagers online and supporting parents, Blackburn wrote in a written comment. I’m not sure how long you will stay outside in California, but in my hometown, some people will publish news that they don’t want others to see at this time.
She also said that in any case, these measures of Instagram are too little and too late. Moseli subsequently stated that Instagram is considering other measures to protect user safety, including an option to push information streams in chronological order, and plans to launch this option in the first quarter of next year. Previously in 2018, Twitter took a similar approach, reintroducing the option of users to receive information streams in reverse chronological order.
As far as Moseli is concerned, Wednesday was his first official appearance in Congress, but many Meta employees have testified to Congress over the years. For example, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) has attended Congress several times to adjust on a number of topics, such as the company’s earlier ambitions in the cryptocurrency field and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. After the privacy policy, etc.
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Knowing the mistake but not changing
In her written comments, Blackburn cited a large number of testimonies she heard from Meta executives over the past few years, stating, Time and time again, what you are saying sounds like you are indeed listening to us and agreeing – but then Nothing has changed, which makes people feel frustrated.
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah stated that he conducted a similar experiment by creating an account for a fictitious 13-year-old girl to understand how the Instagram platform recommends topics that young users follow. He said that this account initially viewed hair-related content, but was soon recommended by Instagram to follow a famous female celebrity; after that, Instagram began to recommend posts about weight loss and plastic surgery.
(This behavior) is rampant. Mike Lee added. Moseli said that he was not aware of this case.
Blumenthal and Blackburn have conducted similar experiments before and shared them at past hearings. Among them, Blumenthal described a recent experiment conducted by his team. In the experiment, the team set up all the available protection options on an account, and then searched for the term “cut wrist.”
The (searched) results are so realistic, (that) I don’t think I can describe them in this hearing, he said. This thing happened in the past few days. Mosseri told Mike Lee that in the next quarter, Instagram’s community standards implementation report will be independently audited by Ernst & Young.
Subsequently, Moseli added that he will do his best to publish the data behind the internal research cited in the leaked files, unless there are privacy issues, and said that he will not delete these files because of the data retention policy. He also said that third-party researchers will be provided with “meaningful data access” permissions so that they can conduct their own research and experiments.