▶ 0:08:21Sen. Grassley: Good morning, everybody. In today's digital era, our young people face risks that previous generations couldn't even imagine. Even though technology brings amazing opportunities for education and growth, it also opens doors to new dangers that we must confront.
▶ 0:08:52Sen. Grassley: This isn't the first hearing we have had on this issue. Unfortunately, probably won't be the last. We held a hearing on this same subject roughly a year ago, when we brought ceos from some of the largest social media companies to discuss safety issues on their platforms. We held a similar hearing one year before that.
▶ 0:09:21Sen. Grassley: On the one hand, this is alarming, because the problems are getting worse. In 2023, for instance, the cyber tip line received 36.2 million reports of suspected online child expectation, a 12%
▶ 0:09:52Sen. Grassley: Increase over 2022. Even though the numbers have been published for 2024, it seems they are expected to go up . Additionally alarming are the new technologies being used by bad actors to exploit children online.
▶ 0:10:14Sen. Grassley: Creditors can use generative ai to take normal images of children and manipulate them to create forms of see sam. In 2020, cmac reported almost 61,000 instances of generative
▶ 0:10:46Sen. Grassley: Artificial intelligence csam. Despite this, congress has enacted no significant legislation to address these dangers against children. Tech platforms have been unhelpful in our legislative efforts.
▶ 0:11:08Sen. Grassley: Big tech promises to collaborate , but they are noticeably silent in supporting legislation that would affect meaningful change. In fact, their lobbyists swarmed the hill armed with red herrings and scare tactics suggesting that we will somehow break the internet if we implement even these very modest reforms.
▶ 0:11:40Sen. Grassley: Meanwhile, these tech platforms generate revenues that dwarf the economies of most nations. So, how do they make so much money? If they do it by compromising our data and privacy and keeping our children's eyes glued to the screens through addicting algorithms.
▶ 0:12:08Sen. Grassley: Indeed, in one recent study, 46% of teenagers reported that they are online "almost constantly." this has had severe mental consequences for adolescents. It has also rep -- led to a rise in sexual exploitation, as some algorithms have actually connected victims to their abusers.
▶ 0:12:40Sen. Grassley: Such tech platforms, should such platforms be allowed to profit at the expense of our children's privacy? Our children's safety? Our children's health? Should they be allowed to contribute to a toxic digital ecosystem without being held accountable? So, I believe to everybody the answer is very clear.
▶ 0:13:12Sen. Grassley: When these platforms failed to implement adequate safety measures, they are complacent in harms that follow and should be held accountable. That said, there are some signs of encouragement.
▶ 0:13:29Sen. Grassley: Just as new technologies are being developed that exacerbate harm to children online, so too are technologies being developed to combat exploitation. As one example, with ai rapidly evolving, open safety tools are being developed to recognize and report csam.
▶ 0:13:58Sen. Grassley: Some of the witnesses here today will speak to the effectiveness of these tools. Additionally, on the committee, on a committee with some of the more -- the most diverse viewpoints in the U.S. senate we have actually advanced bipartisan legislation that addresses legal gaps in the current framework.
▶ 0:14:24Sen. Grassley: Especially those related to the blanket immunity that section 230 provides. Last congress, for example, we reported several bills, online safety bills out of committee, with overwhelming bipartisan support.
▶ 0:14:46Sen. Grassley: There are a number of bills being considered and refined this congress, which will give attention to -- which we'll give attention to in due course. That being said, we cannot come up with wise and effective legislative solutions without first understanding the nature and scope of the problem. So, that is why we are having this hearing today.
▶ 0:15:12Sen. Grassley: The witnesses come from various backgrounds and represent very diverse perspectives, all of which point to the need for our committee to improve legislation in continuing our work to keep kids safe. So, with that I will open things up to ranking member durbin to give opening remarks. After that, we will hear from senators blackburn and klobuchar.
▶ 0:15:40Sen. Grassley: Then I will introduce the witnesses.
▶ 0:15:43Sen. Durbin: Thank you, senator grassley. This is unusual, a change in leadership in this committee and yet an issue that we took very seriously over the last few years on a bipartisan basis that has survived the change. In fact, this hearing is evidence of the determination of the chairman. I would like to join you on the assurance that we are taking this issue very seriously.
▶ 0:16:11Sen. Durbin: It was almost exactly two years ago when this committee held a similar hearing and we heard from six witnesses about the harm that social media does who our kids and grandkids. A mom whose son took his own life after being bullied online. A young woman whose mental and physical health suffered as she chased the unattainable lifestyle depicted on instagram and other apps.
▶ 0:16:35Sen. Durbin: Experts who told us have big tech designs the platforms to be addictive, keeping users online for longer and longer and longer times so that they can be fed more targeted ads. Individuals combating the tidal wave of child sexual abuse material, csam, flowing on the internet. I told the parents and the young people in the audience that I would roll up my sleeves, get to work and pass legislation to protect kids from online safety concerns.
▶ 0:17:05Sen. Durbin: That spring the committee reported five bills to help protect kids online. That included my stop csam act. I want to thank senator hawley for joining me in that effort, which we hope to renew soon, along with bipartisan bills from senators graham, blumenthal, klobuchar, corning, blackburn, and all soft. These bills were reported out of the committee unanimously.
▶ 0:17:31Sen. Durbin: For anyone who is a newcomer to capitol hill or this committee, you have the american political spectrum from one end to the other on this committee and for us to do anything unanimously is nothing short of vacant -- political miracle. We did it. The most conservative republicans to the most progressive democrats. It's almost unheard of to pass a bill unanimously, yet we did it five times.
▶ 0:17:58Sen. Durbin: One of these bills, the report act, later signed into law by the president, strengthened the cyber tip line run by the national center for missing and exploited children. As for the rest, different story. Big tech opened up its $61.5 million lobbying war chest to make sure these bills never became law.
▶ 0:18:21Sen. Durbin: Let's be clear, none of these bills were the silver bullet to make the internet completely safe for kids, but it would be a significant step towards holding tech companies accountable for the harm and damage they cause, the death they cause. That is why the tech companies opposed to them as strongly as I did. They didn't do it publicly. Publicly, they said it was such a great idea. But privately they beat the hell out of us.
▶ 0:18:49Sen. Durbin: A year ago I called in the ceos of five major tech platforms. Some, I had to issue subpoenas. We demanded answers under oath and on the record. Several companies implemented child safety improvements just days before the ceos came to testify.
▶ 0:19:07Sen. Durbin: Mark zuckerberg, under pressure from senator holly, all -- artful questioning, gave a long overdue apology to the parents of the children who his platform had hurt. Long overdue apologies are not enough. Dozens of parents and survivors in that room, thousands impacted across the country, demand more. I for one plan to follow through.
▶ 0:19:30Sen. Durbin: In the coming weeks senator hawley and I will reintroduce the stop csam act, opening the courthouse door to families whose children have been victimized because of big tech's failure to monitor their online platforms. I hope senator grassley will join me for the timely markup on the bill. This week I will join senators graham, white house, holly, klobuchar, and blackburn to introduce bill 230.
▶ 0:20:01Sen. Durbin: This is long overdue. Section 230 and the legal immunity it provides to big tech has been on the books since 1996, long before social media was a part of our lives. To the extent that this protection was ever needed, its usefulness for the so-called fledgling industry has long since passed.
▶ 0:20:23Sen. Durbin: I'm no -- under no illusion that it will be easy to pass this legislation and to make the tech industry finally legally accountable for the damage they are causing, but they ought to face the same liability as every other industry in america. Just last year big tech and their allies in the house killed the kids online safety privacy act, a bill introduced by I believe senators blumenthal and blackburn as well.
▶ 0:20:53Sen. Durbin: It would have imposed a basic -- basic duty of care on tech platforms. It passed the senate 91-3, but big tech did it in in the house. Couldn't even get it up for a vote. The national center for missing and exploited children receives 100,000 reports to their cyber tip line every single day. That's not just a statistic. Each report involves a victim.
▶ 0:21:19Sen. Durbin: It could be anything from images of a toddler being raped to a teenager being encouraged to commit suicide. 100,000 reports in the united states every single day. I hope everyone keeps that in mind as we hold this hearing. We cannot wait, we have to move. I hope it drives the public to demand that congress finally do something.
▶ 0:21:46Sen. Grassley: Senator blackburn?
▶ 0:21:49Sen. Blackburn: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I want to say thank you to our witnesses for being here today. Mr. guffey, we appreciate you are here and sharing your story. Mr. chairman, you mentioned it was a year ago that we had tech execs in front of us and nothing much has changed. That is the tragic part of this situation. Nothing much has changed.
▶ 0:22:22Sen. Blackburn: There is been windowdressing. There have been ads run saying -- look at us, look at what we are doing. Unfortunately, there is no enforcement to this. That is why it is still dangerous for kids to be online.
▶ 0:22:41Sen. Blackburn: They are still facing online threats, exposure, sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, promotion of suicide, eating disorders, end of the thing that is so interesting is in the physical world, there are laws against this. It is only in the virtual space that it remains the wild west.
▶ 0:23:12Sen. Blackburn: Where our children can be attacked every single day, nonstop, 24/7, 365. It is long overdue. The kids online safety act that senator blumenthal and I have worked on for years now has been mentioned already this morning.
▶ 0:23:34Sen. Blackburn: There is such a broad bipartisan coalition, whether it is parents, principals, teachers, pediatricians, child psychologists, even teens themselves have come to us and have said -- something needs to be done about this. We have had companies like microsoft, x, snap, who have supported this bill. Unfortunately, kids are still being harmed.
▶ 0:24:06Sen. Blackburn: Online. I talked to a mom recently whose child died. They met somebody online who sold them, supposedly, a xanax. They met them on snap. They took what they thought was a xanax and they died. It was fentanyl. So, these are the dangers that are there.
▶ 0:24:32Sen. Blackburn: While there is broad bipartisan support, senator grassley mentioned the lobbying efforts of some of the big tech firms and how they went with the distortions and lies to the house and this bill did not get through. So, it is time to stop this and get it passed. Senator durbin mentioned the bills that we sent out of committee last year.
▶ 0:25:00Sen. Blackburn: There is one that got signed into law, the bill that senator ossoff and I did, the report act. This deals with the cyber tip line. It increases the time that evidence submitted has to be preserved, giving law enforcement more time to investigate, to get these criminals into court and then get them locked up.
▶ 0:25:30Sen. Blackburn: We still have so much work to do. Senator klobuchar and I are going to lead the privacy technology and law subcommittee. These issues will be coming before us. We have got plenty of work to do. Mr. chairman, we are looking forward to, I look forward to convening this committee, working to make certain we are pushing this legislation, that we are going to protect our children in the virtual space.
▶ 0:26:02Sen. Blackburn: Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:26:06Senator Klobuchar: Thank you so much, Mr. chairman. I'm truly looking forward to working with senator blackburn on this important subcommittee. As many of you know, senator lee and I chaired the antitrust committee for a long time and I think that this situation now, with the possibility of moving on these bills, is going to be a very positive development.
▶ 0:26:26Senator Klobuchar: As senator blackburn just pointed out, despite the strong support we have had from senator durbin and senator grassley and senator graham, when he chair this committee, or was the ranking on this committee, we have continued to run into roadblocks to passing these laws and it's getting absolutely absurd. Senator grassley is well aware of the antitrust tech bill that we lead where hundreds of millions of dollars were spent against it in tv ads.
▶ 0:26:59Senator Klobuchar: Despite the fact that these companies have agreed to these consumer protections in other countries, that did not happen in america. I think that this piece of it, whether it is the eating disorder content on instagram, frightening rise of nonconsensual ai generated pornographic deepfakes, or the tragic stories of kids losing their lives to fentanyl laced pills, we will be leading the way as we continue to push the
▶ 0:27:30Senator Klobuchar: Antitrust, privacy, and news bills. Just this month we heard from bridget ignoring of hastings, minnesota. Her son was struggling with migraines and bought what he thought was a percocet over snap chat to deal with the pain, and it wasn't, it was a pill laced with fentanyl and he died at age 19.
▶ 0:27:57Senator Klobuchar: For too long, companies have turned a blind eye when young children joined their platforms, used algorithms that push harmful content. They've done that and provided a venue for dealers to sell deadly drugs like fentanyl. We know that social media increases the risk of addiction, expectation, and even suicide among kids.
▶ 0:28:19Senator Klobuchar: I will never forget the testimony of the fbi director telling us that in just one year, I believe it was 2023, over 20 kids had committed suicide just because of the pornography and images that were put out there when they were innocently sending a picture to who they thought was a girlfriend or boyfriend. This is why this committee has taken this on on a bipartisan basis.
▶ 0:28:45Senator Klobuchar: I am hopeful that this hearing will be the beginning of actually passing these bills into law. Representative guffey, you and I met through senator cruz and of the bill he and I had, the take it down act. We have an additional bill with senator cornyn, the shield act passed through this committee. As you know too well, the threat of dissemination alone can be tragic, especially for kids.
▶ 0:29:15Senator Klobuchar: We need to enact the kids online safety act, which passed the senate on a 91-three vote, we know some of them are stalled out in the house. We need to get the rules of the road in place for safeguarding our data.
▶ 0:29:31Senator Klobuchar: According to a recent study, social media platforms generate $11 billion in revenue in 2022 from advertising directed at kids and teenagers, including $2 billion in profits derived from users age 12 and under.
▶ 0:29:49Senator Klobuchar: I am supportive, as was mentioned by senator durbin, that he, senator graham, holly, and many others, to open the court room doors to those harmed by social media by making those reforms to section 230. That legislation was enacted long before any of this was going on. Somehow, with respect to other industries, we have been able to make smart decisions to put more safety rules in place.
▶ 0:30:17Senator Klobuchar: Just ask the passengers on the flight that flipped upside down in toronto who were in the seats that were the result of safety rules. Yet when it comes to this, we put up our hands and say no, they are lobbying against us or we like the people who work there and we do nothing. By doing nothing, instead of reaching reasonable accommodations on legislation, we just let them run wild at the expense of our kids lives. Thank you.
▶ 0:30:47Sen. Grassley: When you consider five bills getting out of this committee last congress and over the last few years, congress has only been in session about 2.5 days per week. It supposed to be a new regime. I'm not sure that it is. I would hope that some of you folks on the democrat side would push republicans to make sure we keep the senate in session more than 2.5 days a week so that we can get some of this done.
▶ 0:31:16Sen. Grassley: We've had hardly any important legislation in the last two years. We were basically just a confirming body. Take that. I hope you enjoy doing that like when I was complaining about 2.5 days a week when democrats control the senate.
▶ 0:31:46Sen. Grassley: Going to introduce our guest today. First witness, Mr. brandon guffey, who serves in the south carolina house of representatives. Following the tragic loss of your son, gavin, Mr. duffy became an advocate for mental health awareness in combating online crimes.
▶ 0:32:12Sen. Grassley: As senator blackburn said, we are sorry for the loss of your son, Mr. guffey. It's probably hard for you to be here to talk about it, but thank you for being here. Next, we have miss carrie goldberg, plaintiff's attorney, founder of the law firm ca goldberg, plc.
▶ 0:32:37Sen. Grassley: She specializes in representing victims of sexual abuse, child exultation, online harassment, and other forms of digital abuse. Professor mary graw leary, 4 -- former federal prosecutor, current professor at the catholic university of america.
▶ 0:33:02Sen. Grassley: Professor leary focuses on the explication of women and children. She has an upcoming article that dives deeply into the history of section 230 and its role in facilitating child sexual abuse material. Mr.
▶ 0:33:26Sen. Grassley: John pizzuro is the ceo of raven, started as a former law enforcement, raven gathers subject matter experts across multiple disciplines to protect children from online exultation. He's a former commander of the new jersey internet crimes against children task force program.
▶ 0:33:58Sen. Grassley: Mr. stephen balkam, ceo and founder of family online safety institute. This international nonprofit is dedicated to making the internet safer for kids. Before founding the institute in 2007, he spent 30 years as a leader in the nonprofit sector, championing in -- championing online safety.
▶ 0:34:27Sen. Grassley: His work at the institute brings together those in government, industry, and the nonprofit sector to create a culture of responsibility. I would like to ask you to stand and be sworn. Raise your right hand.
▶ 0:34:49Sen. Grassley: Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give before this committee be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? They have all answered affirmatively. Mr. guffey, we will start with you and go from my left to my right.
▶ 0:35:10Rep. Guffey: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Distinguish senators. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is representative brandon guffey and I'm here to share with you why protection from online dangers and holding big tech responsible is now my life's mission. Sometimes god sends you down a path you never thought you would be on. July of 2022, I lap -- I lost my oldest son, gavin guffey, to suicide.
▶ 0:35:42Rep. Guffey: In his last instagram post one week prior to his death, he said that this week help to me look up to where my head should've been years ago. Jesus and his word have given me a high that no other can compare to this love. He ended that post with a less than three sign. He would send that out again on a black screen to his friends and his younger brother, cohen, who is with me here today. At 1:40 a.m., he took his life.
▶ 0:36:14Rep. Guffey: We quickly learned that he was contacted on instagram at around midnight, and he told his friends that he would jump off a game to chat with her. In one hour and 40 minutes, my son was gone. That predator was recently extradited to the U.S. from nigeria three weeks ago.
▶ 0:36:36Rep. Guffey: The predator attacked not only my son, gavin, 17, but began to extort my 16-year-old son, my 14-year-old cousin, and then myself. One of my messages read "did I tell you that your son begged for his life"? How is this possible? They left up the profiles that the predator use, one of them was the account that began to attack my family after meda was fully aware of this predator.
▶ 0:37:05Rep. Guffey: I vowed from that moment that I would make it my life's mission to protect children online and would not stop. I was elected to the south carolina house and within four months of taking office I successfully pass what is known as gavin's law where sex torsion is mandated in education and every kid is made aware so that they don't feel alone like my son did that night. I have worked with many states. I started a nonprofit talk to teens about medic -- mental health and big tech.
▶ 0:37:37Rep. Guffey: I sold my businesses and went to work for a tech company that provides tools to protect children. I've become an advocate on the hill to show the members what it means. I've seen congress cave instead of listening to the people. I witness senate bills go to the house with a speaker refused to be heard -- to let it be heard.
▶ 0:38:07Rep. Guffey: They were great bills. I have taken notes and reintroduced them on the state level, like the elvis act in tennessee. Senators cruz and klobuchar led the take it down act that already passed the senate. I would like nothing more to be proven wrong about the inefficiency of congress by having the house pass the take it back active soon. Speaker johnson, chairman gurie, the ball is in your court. Please don't let us down again.
▶ 0:38:37Rep. Guffey: I have witnessed 40 teenagers take their lives since gavin due to sextortion while we fight among ourselves. Will it take one of your children or grandchildren before you are finally fed up enough to move? It's just one of the harms that come because of the lack of accountability of big tech. Big tech is the big tobacco of this generation. We've seen the statistics coming over and over with parental survivors knocking on doors daily.
▶ 0:39:07Rep. Guffey: 230 will go down as one of the biggest disasters that allowed big tech to run rampant without reproduction -- without responsibility. In this chamber last january, I stood holding a photo of gavin while mark zuckerberg offered a forced, pathetic apology. Where I'm from, we say don't talk about it, be about it.
▶ 0:39:30Rep. Guffey: Until these companies can be held responsible on the billions that they make an advertising through our children, big tech will simply -- something never be about it. They pulled down 60,000 accounts in one day, one country, from majority -- nigeria off of instagram. Ask yourself, did they pull them down to actually help our children? If so, why haven't they done more since? Or did they pull it down for a pr stunt?
▶ 0:39:58Rep. Guffey: I would say it's nothing more than a pr stunt so that they can get a pat on the back as if they have done something good, but have done nothing since. I got way off-line. I want to focus on my main message to big tech. As lawmakers, we have to say get in line or off line.
▶ 0:40:20Rep. Guffey: Right now we have too many politicians making decisions based on their next election and not enough leaders making decisions based on the next generation. Are we politicians or leaders? We can't just talk about it, we have to be about it. If we can't protect the next generation, what are we even fighting for? Tomorrow needs you. Our children need you now.
▶ 0:40:43Sen. Grassley: Ms. goldberg:
▶ 0:40:46Sen. Grassley: Ms. goldberg?
▶ 0:40:46Ms. Goldberg: Chair grassley, ranking member durbin, distinguished members of the senate committee of the judiciary, my name is carrie goldberg and I am a lawyer who represents families catastrophically injured by big tech. I want to tell you about the cases I've been working on for the past decade. I'm the originating attorney in a case against snap where client 's children were matched with drug dealers and sold counterfeit fence laced pills that killed them.
▶ 0:41:17Ms. Goldberg: -- fentanyl-laced pills that killed them. I am joined by my client, amy, the mother of 14-year-old alexander neville. In another case against snap, criminals are exploiting a known security violent -- vulnerability to access csam and blackmail and extort kids with it.
▶ 0:41:41Ms. Goldberg: Yesterday, the ninth circuit dismissed one of my cases, representing a 15-year-old, a severely autistic boy, who at age 15 was fondled -- funneled into the grinder marketing campaign and recommended to four pedophiles who raped him over four days. In court, they said they had no duty to restrict the access of children to their hookup at.
▶ 0:42:09Ms. Goldberg: In another case of mine, a 13-year-old was lured to the site band lab, another site with no age restrictions. She thought she was meeting a 17-year-old boy, but it turned out to be 40-year-old noah petrone, from portland, oregon, who posted openly songs about her on a music sharing platform, one of them called pedophile in a minor. The song was called pedophile in a minor.
▶ 0:42:40Ms. Goldberg: June 24, 2022, he drove 15 hours to her home, abducted her on the way to school, stuffed her in the trunk of the car, raped her and abused her for eight days. Despite the manhunt, band lab refused to provide information that could have led to a quick rescue. They wanted to respect for jonah -- respect the privacy of the abuser.
▶ 0:43:12Ms. Goldberg: And in 2021 of my clients children learned about a product from a suicide glorifying website, where he could order the product to end his life. Three months later she exchanged -- his grieving mother exchange 57 messages with amazon, telling them about their product being m -- amplified on a suicide mention board.
▶ 0:43:36Ms. Goldberg: Despite knowing that there was no household use for this product beside suicide continued to deliver it and sell it for 24 months. I'm now representing 27 other families whose children bought the same product after the fact. There are two main consistencies, section 230 and not knowing.
▶ 0:43:59Ms. Goldberg: I was here when this committee so powerfully told the ceos at meta, twitter, discord, snap, and tiktok that you were done with discussions and wanted solutions. The most important thing I can say is that families want legislation, like sunsetting section 230, the defiance act, shield. They want laws that increase accountability.
▶ 0:44:25Ms. Goldberg: That create protection boards at the ftc, the cyber tip line, creating procedures the contest of platforms -- that can test a platforms failure to root -- leave -- remove csam. Families want accountability against platforms in the case of harm. For example, take my case representing am, on trafficking and liability.
▶ 0:44:51Ms. Goldberg: At age 11, am lived in a normal town living a normal life when she went to a sleepover and found a website called omegle. It's a private streaming chat site.
▶ 0:45:07Ms. Goldberg: He made her -- a man on there made her his sexual sex slave for three years, forcing her to perform, interrupting her at school and at the dinner table, forcing her to go back to recruit more kids. The abuse eventually ended when his home that he shared with his wife's daycare was rated and images of am and other young girls were found. In that case, they did not intend her injuries.
▶ 0:45:39Ms. Goldberg: I pointed to the mountain of evidence that omegle had about the prevalence of damage and harm on their platform. I pointed to academic journals, exposes. As a result of how we pled, we advanced into discovery and acquired 60,000 documents exposing the extent of injured children, leading to them agreeing to shutter omegle forever.
▶ 0:46:08Ms. Goldberg: We are in consensus today, we are here not to repeat history. Section 230 was supposed to incentivize responsible content moderation, instead it did the opposite. Looking into the future on behalf of the victims I represent, we are here to support laws that pressure platforms to know about the harms and fix them. Thank you. I look forward to questions.
▶ 0:46:29Sen. Grassley: Now, professor leary.
▶ 0:46:35Prof. Leary: Thank you to all of the members of the committee. As has been mentioned, I'm grateful for all the work the committee has done on this issue. The experience of children in the digital space is fraught with danger. One might want to ask, why do you have to work so hard, why keep passing these laws? Why are the laws that congress had on the books regarding exploited crimes working?
▶ 0:47:05Prof. Leary: There are lots of answers, to be sure. The common thread this morning so far is section 230 of the communications decency act, which has been transformed into what I label a de facto near absolute immunity regime. What I mean by that is exactly what miss goldberg just said.
▶ 0:47:26Prof. Leary: This was a law that was designed to incentivize platforms for protection and instead it has incentivized them to harm. I want to make about five points that I think will help frame the discussion about section 230. The first are what I would call framing principles.
▶ 0:47:47Prof. Leary: When one reviews the text, the history, the structure of section 230 of the communications decency act, it's clear it's a law that is not standalone while protecting freedom of the internet as tec and its surrogates will try to argue. It's a law born out of a law born out of the landscape of child protection.
▶ 0:48:08Prof. Leary: When you go back to the legislative history, there's no question that the senate with the act, the house with the internet freedom and families act, they were wrestling with the same question. How, as you look to the telecommunications act, how could U.S. have a safer internet and other media? Not weather, but how.
▶ 0:48:37Prof. Leary: Section two must be regarded as an experiment. I say that because when you look at the promises that tech made in 1996, and when you look at being supporters of the iff e in the house, they represented to you and to america that this would be a way in which we could protect our children. That was their claim, that was the promise. Number three, the experiment has failed. The experiment failed for all the reasons said already.
▶ 0:49:08Prof. Leary: Why? I would say that in addition to the reference to what happens on capitol hill with regards to tech, the transformation of 600 230 in the decency act into a law that incentivizes harm was not by accident. It wasn't sort of something that just emerged from the internet. It was a systematic effort by tec and its surrogates to litigate that throughout this country.
▶ 0:49:36Prof. Leary: They went across the country over 30 years, arguing not for the narrow, limited protection for good samaritans as stated by the act, rather broad immunity. Interestingly, community is in -- is nowhere in section 230 of the communications decency act, as a side note. That result has had human consequences that we have heard today.
▶ 0:50:01Prof. Leary: To highlight one that has been said, 90 9000, 100,000 reports today will happen on the cyber tip line. It has also important effects in the cold -- court room that miss goldberg alluded to it and I want to highlight a couple of them. Keep in mind, this has become an immunity, not a defense. That's essential. First, as an immunity, the cases are thrown out with motion to dismiss. There is no access to discovery.
▶ 0:50:32Prof. Leary: So, when we say that victims, survivors, states attorneys generals are shut out of the courtroom, we don't mean it's hard to win these cases, we mean they are shut out of the courtroom, that they don't have their day in court, notwithstanding the harm that they have experienced. I label this reality the dual danger of de facto near absolute immunity.
▶ 0:50:54Prof. Leary: First, the shield that allowed platforms to engage in a list of criminal activities having nothing to do with publishing has allowed this industry to grow to a massive scale, where one individual or a small company can cause massive harm, as we've heard. The other part of the dual danger is because of the immunity, there's no access to discovery. There's no way to look under the hood of this incredibly dangerous industry.
▶ 0:51:25Prof. Leary: There is no guard rails. That means, as senator klobuchar pointed out, what it tells us as I wrap up is that there is no guard rails for the harm that these folks will experience.
▶ 0:51:42Prof. Leary: So, I offer some suggestions of reform in my papers, but I think the key thing here is to keep the good samaritan protections that section 230 has, but to get rid of the c1 protections that have distorted this and sent ovation -- incentivizing of harm. Listen to the words of justice thomas, where he lamented the reality of section 230, stating make no mistake about it, there is danger in delay. The danger, we can do the math.
▶ 0:52:14Prof. Leary: If we accepted 99,000 reports being made today, it means 12,375 reports will come in during this hearing and in the last five minutes I've spoken there have been 340 four reports. If that is not enough of a reason to act, I don't know what is. Thank you you, chair.
▶ 0:52:32Sen. Grassley: Thank you, professor. Now, Mr. john pizzuro.
▶ 0:52:41John Pizzuro: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. As the ceo of raven, dedicated to taking on child exploitation, I'm here to urge decisive legislative action. Despite multiple testimonies before congress, progress has been slow, hindered by special interest groups and financial incentives that favor the status quo.
▶ 0:53:06John Pizzuro: We must prioritize our children's safety and prioritize those who protect them above all else. New threats emerge, old ones remain unaddressed. Artificial intelligence enables offenders to manipulate regular images of children into explicit content, create images of children that don't even exist, and groom children.
▶ 0:53:33John Pizzuro: Offenders, they now increasingly exploit children for financial gain, in addition to their depraved sexual gratification. Yet let us lash -- legislative inaction allows this to persist. The tech industry has not meaningfully reduced online victimization. Their voluntary cooperation with law enforcement is minimal, allowing offenders to continue exploiting children with impunity. In 2023, for example, there were 36 million cyber tips.
▶ 0:54:05John Pizzuro: Apple, holding a 57% market share in the U.S., only reported 275. According to investigators in the field, discord notifies users of legal processing's subpoenas, enabling offenders to erase evidence before law enforcement can act, allowing offenders to continue targeting children.
▶ 0:54:29John Pizzuro: Electronic service providers permit offenders to rejoin platforms under new aliases with the same ip address, while failing to block foreign ip address is used for sextortion. This emboldens criminals and leaves children unprotected. Poor moderation, the lack of parental controls around age identification, and inadequate safety measures further exposing children to these dangers.
▶ 0:54:56John Pizzuro: As mentioned a lot today, social media algorithms push harmful content, enabling creditors to reach victims globally. Ai powered grooming will allow offenders to manipulate children at scale, mimicking their behaviors to establish trust. Should troubling, even chatgpt tools can provide information on grooming tactics when framed in innocent ways.
▶ 0:55:22John Pizzuro: The dangers extend beyond child exploitation to drug access with platforms looking to sell fentanyl and illicit substances. Law enforcement is overwhelmed and under resourced. They've been highly successful in apprehending offenders but the increasing volume of cyber tips has made proactive investigations nearly impossible. In the U.S.
▶ 0:55:49John Pizzuro: There are 229,000 ip address is currently right now trading. Two. Images of known child sexual abuse material, yet only 923 are being actually worked. Studies indicate that over 50% of those individuals are hands-on offenders, with eight to 13 victims each. The mental toll on those who investigate these crimes is severe.
▶ 0:56:17John Pizzuro: Prosecutors, child advocates, law enforcement officers are exposed to daily horrific content, leading to burnout and ptsd. We must provide them with adequate wellness resources to make sure they can continue their critical work. As a retired new jersey state police commander, I have seen firsthand what can happen. Despite the critical role, the internet crimes against children program has been chronically underfunded, despite being responsible for most of the child investigations in the U.S.
▶ 0:56:50John Pizzuro: Authorized for $60 million in 2008, only $31.9 million has been appropriated. That's $522,000 per task force, per year, to investigate child exploitation. That's why I urge everyone here to cosponsor the protect our children reauthorization act of 2025. Children are our most valuable resource.
▶ 0:57:19John Pizzuro: Their victimization has lasting consequences on society. Raven stands ready to collaborate with members of the senate, house, trump administration, and ceos of big tech to develop effective solutions. Quite frankly, the phrase talk is cheap is 100% accurate. Action is the only remedy. How many of our children, and those who protect them, will be impacted as the result of inaction and debate?
▶ 0:57:48John Pizzuro: Make no mistake, children are suffering, offenders are winning, and those fighting to protect them are left to struggle without the support they need to rescue victims, hold offenders accountable, and bolster their own mental health in the process. Legislative action is overdue. The solutions are in your power. Our children are counting on you, I'm counting on you. Thank you so much.
▶ 0:58:14Sen. Grassley: Mr. balkam:
▶ 0:58:17Sen. Grassley: Mr. balkam?
▶ 0:58:17Mr. Balkam: Good morning, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is stephen balkam, founder and ceo of the family online safety institute. For two decades, we have worked with industry, government, academia, and the nonprofit sector to create a safer digital world for children and families. I'm also here as a father and newly minted grandfather.
▶ 0:58:45Mr. Balkam: This is my third time testify before the committee, having first appeared in july of 1995. The committee hearing then was called cyber foreign and children. While much has changed, the mission remains the same. We believe in a three-pronged approach -- three-pronged approach online safety. Enlightened public policy, industry best practices, good digital parenting.
▶ 0:59:13Mr. Balkam: Our goal is to create protections for kids and empower young people to navigate digital spaces safely and responsibly. We want to protect kids on the internet, from -- not from it. Parents of the youngest children should have the strongest protections possible, including easy to find and easy to use parental controls.
▶ 0:59:37Mr. Balkam: As kids grow, our role as parents shifts from being helicopter parents to being copilots, guiding them as they build digital resilience. Research shows teens value online safety tools, like blocking, muting, reporting, and privacy settings. Teaching them to use these affectively fosters independence and self-regulation.
▶ 1:00:03Mr. Balkam: We have found that empowerment is often the best form of protection. We must prepare young people to engage safely and thoughtfully with the digital world. It could be that with digital literacy and an understanding of the rights and responsibilities. Recently, there have been calls to ban young people from social media and other online spaces.
▶ 1:00:28Mr. Balkam: Blanket bands deprive children from any positive experiences that they may have, they are difficult to enforce and open up too many unintended consequences. After all, children have rights, including the right to safely access the web. Information, free expression, connecting with others.
▶ 1:00:52Mr. Balkam: Instead of a blanket ban, we need thoughtful input that accounts for the evolving maturity of children. Technical solutions like age of assurance are improving, but there is universally approved system as of yet. It is challenging to get the balance between safety, privacy, and effectiveness right.
▶ 1:01:16Mr. Balkam: As I said recently at our annual conference in front of 350 industry leaders, "you can and must do better to create easy to find and easy to use controls for parents and online safety tools for teens and young people. You must do better to promote those tools, develop them.
▶ 1:01:42Mr. Balkam: You must do better in collaboration with each other to harmonize tools across the ecosystem, so that parents and teens are not overwhelmed with the task of setting and managing controls across multiple games and social media platforms.
▶ 1:02:01Mr. Balkam: In the meantime, congress has taken important steps in the space, passing the camera act three years ago, which funds essential research on children's development and well-being. There is still so much more work to be done. Federal action is critical. States are beginning to fill the gaps with their own online safety laws.
▶ 1:02:27Mr. Balkam: Unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned laws create a fragmented regulatory landscape and face legal challenges. A strong federal framework would provide clarity, allowing states to build on this. Congress has the opportunity to lead with balanced and thoughtful policies, including passing a comprehensive data apollo -- privacy law. Fund going -- funding ongoing research.
▶ 1:02:56Mr. Balkam: Prioritizing specific, targeted bills, like the take it down act and kids off social media act. Encouraging industry cooperation to simplify parental controls and online safety tools. Rejecting blanket bans in favor of thoughtful restrictions including young people's input. Critically, supporting digital literacy programs to build resilience in young users.
▶ 1:03:23Mr. Balkam: So, to conclude, let's challenge ourselves to reimagine what online safety can look like. Not just as a range of restrictions, but as a foundation for resilience, confidence, and opportunity. Thank you, I look forward to your questions.
▶ 1:03:37Sen. Grassley: Thank you all for your testimony. We will have a five-minute round of questions. I'm going to start with Mr. pizzuro. Ai has opened up the possibilities for bad actors to generate novel forms of csam. One recent report found that 385 ai generated csams were posted in a single dark web forum over nine months.
▶ 1:04:08Sen. Grassley: Can you explain the challenge of ai generated csam, what it poses for law enforcement and tech companies?
▶ 1:04:16Mr. Pizzuro: A couple of things. Right now, without forensic software, it will be hard to tell the difference between what is ai and what isn't. Second, I could take a picture of the senator right now and age regress them. You could be a 40-year-old male, I could now make you a 21-year-old female. Now I can make you a 10-year-old girl. With that ai in these apps, I can then nudeify those apps.
▶ 1:04:47Mr. Pizzuro: The challenge comes with this, I don't even need to groom someone right now, I can get an image off of the clear web to do that. That is going to be the complexity. The challenge will be how do we determine who is a real victim, who is not in a lot of instances.
▶ 1:05:03Sen. Grassley: Thank you. Sextortion fentanyl -- fentanyl -- professor leary, I heard your five points, I'm not asking you to repeat them, but how would you revise section 230 in light of the online ecosystem currently?
▶ 1:05:21Ms. Goldberg: Thank you -- prof.
▶ 1:05:25Leary: Thank you. First, when I talk about section provision and that incentivizes the platform to be able to remove harmful to reel from their platforms without being sued. Thec the c1 part of the platform should be removed. It serves no purpose, if it ever did.
▶ 1:05:55Leary: A myth has been created about it, that it somehow created the internet and somehow the internet would break without it, and that is simply not true. If it ever was true, this is no longer a fledgling business. It needs to be treated like every other business.
▶ 1:06:20Leary: Another thing I would encourage the senate to do with section 230 is to listen to the national association of attorney general's, who repeatedly has written and asked congress to include in it the ability for them to enforce their state laws, which has also been ruled to be something they cannot do in these courts where tech has argued for an expansive interpretation of section 230. In my mind, that is another courthouse door that has closed. It is a states rights issue.
▶ 1:06:48Leary: The entire architecture of combating expectation of our children involves prosecution, protection, and prevention, and within that, involves multiple pressure points, including civil litigation, state prosecution, and federal prosecution. That, I think, would be an important remedy.
▶ 1:07:06Chair Grassley: Mr. pizzuro, it has taken more time, and maybe it will take longer time, for section 230 to be reformed. And also putting some more things in that can slow the process up. Beyond that reform and liability for big tech, what steps could companies take to protect children online today?
▶ 1:07:34Mr. Pizzuro: One of the things that they know is they know, for example, I mentioned in my testimony -- discord, they notify users. They notify users when they get legal process. Those are policies. They know what ip addresses. If I get banned, I just create a new username. There are also ip addresses beyond the scope's of the U.S., where children are targeted here.
▶ 1:08:03Mr. Pizzuro: These are things that the companies actually know and can do something.
▶ 1:08:06Chair Grassley: Professor leary, I bill was reported out of committee last year that would impose a liability on platforms that knowingly promote csam, and others for recklessly promoting csam. As we continue work shopping bills in this committee, do you think we should pursue a recklessness standard or a norm standard, and the pros and cons?
▶ 1:08:35Ms. Graw Leary: I believe a recklessness standard is superior to a knowing standard. Senator durbin referred to the red herrings. One red herring is that recklessness is a low standard that would expose these businesses to an onslaught of litigation. A couple of comments on that. First, most businesses function having to act responsibly. They face often a nick. -- a negligence standard.
▶ 1:09:04Ms. Graw Leary: Anybody who says recklessness is uneasy standard to make, I invite you -- lee's come to my criminal law class and meet my criminal law students, who will be able to tell you the definition of recklessness. They will tell you it is challenging. And specifically, it is a country guard of not just a risk -- a substantial and us double risk. The definition of recklessness in the criminal context, and it can be used in other contexts as well.
▶ 1:09:34Ms. Graw Leary: That requires not just objective measure, but subjectivity. It is referred to sometimes as risk creation. That kind of standard is hardly a day in the park for litigants. It is still quite challenging. That is why it is a far better standard than "knowingly" in my opinion.
▶ 1:09:53Sen. Durbin: Are to guffey, thank you for coming back -- representative kustoff, thank you for coming back. I'm sorry for the circumstances, and I know your family and friends have joined you coming in today. It is after the first and we met after a hearing a year ago over for this committee. Thank you very much. Was it a week or two weeks ago we had a hearing on fentanyl?
▶ 1:10:18Chair Grassley: Last week.
▶ 1:10:21Sen. Durbin: And we had another parent of a victim who ordered what he thought was a percocet. It turned out to be leased with fentanyl. It took his life. This is a life or death proposition. You are living it still. I think we will keep it in that context.
▶ 1:10:41Sen. Durbin: Professor leary, I am struck by one of your statements you have given to the committee that this notion of preparing 230 as an unity as opposed to a defense -- of an immunity as opposed to a defense prevents evidence being gathered and discovery taking place.
▶ 1:11:03Sen. Durbin: You say in your remarks to the committee that that diminishes our knowledge of the actual goings on these tech companies and what they are doing and gathering. I recall what representative guffey said in his opening remarks -- this is bigger than big tobacco. I know that issue. Over 30 years ago in the house, I introduced a bill that banned smoking in airplanes. It passed.
▶ 1:11:32Sen. Durbin: At the time, it was the biggest frequent flier club in the world, and we were sick of it. It triggered a discovery process and a jesus across the country gathered -- and ag's across the country gathered and did something significant. I would like you to expand a bit about how this standard precludes our knowledge of what is going on in big tech and the response to this challenge.
▶ 1:11:59Sen. Durbin: With the gathering of that information from the tobacco companies, a demonstration of their lying to the public about the product, really led to their downfall. The same could happen here.
▶ 1:12:14Ms. Graw Leary: I think you are 100% correct on that. When a defendant has a defense, to be responsive to the question -- there is discovery beforehand. Exactly. Or things of that nature. There is a period of discovery where the plaintiffs who have made a good faith claim and get information to build on their case, and the defendants can provide information that may exculpate them.
▶ 1:12:42Ms. Graw Leary: The way that section 230 has been interpreted, it is an immunity. Prior to discovery is when these platforms are coming into court and saying, judge, we don't have to defend ourselves, but we don't even have to litigate this case. You should dismiss it now. It is dismissed prior to discovery.
▶ 1:13:03Ms. Graw Leary: The only way I would say the public has learned a lot of the information about big tech -- for example, that I believe led to kosa and some of the other duty of care, has been through congressional investigations. I reminded -- I'm reminded of that two-year investigation, for whistleblowers and hearings. That is how we are learning this information.
▶ 1:13:28Ms. Graw Leary: Only by getting this information can we then make informed choices about what is the appropriate legislative text. If I could say quickly, justice thomas commented on this, and he has underscored this, when he said let's keep in mind if we fix section 230 -- that is not exactly what he said. He said it would simply give plaintiffs a chance to raise claims on the first place. Plaintiffs must still prove the merits of their case, and some claims will fail.
▶ 1:13:58Ms. Graw Leary: Some states will be yellow -- will be able to update their liability laws to be more appropriate for an internet society.
▶ 1:14:04Sen. Durbin: If I can make one final point in the closing seconds, going back to my analogy of smoking on airlines and dealing with the tobacco issue, the initial bill I introduced and passed in the house banning smoking on airplanes on flights of two hours or less -- people said if it is dangerous, it is dangerous regardless of the duration of the flight.
▶ 1:14:31Sen. Durbin: The reason was I had a minnesota congressman who was a chain smoker was holding up my bill.
▶ 1:14:38Ms. Graw Leary: So timely.
▶ 1:14:41Sen. Durbin: I went to him and said, how long can you go without a cigarette? He said two hours. I put that in the bill and he did not object to it and it moved forward. There are things we are dealing with in some of these bills which are compromises to try to move the issue forward and make progress toward our goal. Do not assume any link which is final. It is all influx and subject to negotiation. Thank you for joining us. >> thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:15:14Sen. Durbin: I would like to thank the witnesses for being here and testifying on this important issue. His are not easy issues to talk about, and not easy in particular because of the tragic circumstances that regrettably brought you here. Representative guffey, I want to express my sympathy to you for the loss of your son, gavin. No parent should ever have to go through that. I commend you on your courage and the strength you have shown as you continue to fight to protect all children.
▶ 1:15:50Sen. Durbin: And what you have gone through -- my heart goes out to you and anyone else who has experienced the things you are describing. In the past several years, I have advocated for reforming the decency act. This is due to increasing concerns about how social media platforms are operating and how they are utilizing section two under 30.
▶ 1:16:19Sen. Durbin: This has promoted harmful challenges to children and facilitated drug trafficking in many cases to minors. First, I introduced the protect act on this point, which mandates stricter limits on online content. It has faced an uphill battle for years, struggling to get online platforms to remove images that were nonconsensual he obtained.
▶ 1:16:51Sen. Durbin: -- nonconsensually obtain. It would require platforms to state the age and maintain verified consent forms for individuals uploading and appearing in content. Bill would require tech companies to take stronger measures to put -- to prevent expedition occurring on their platform, and force immediate removal of child sexually explicit material and revenge corn, upon receiving notice that the content in question was uploaded without the legally required consent.
▶ 1:17:22Sen. Durbin: Second, I introduced another bill as a component to the protect act, called the screen act. The screen act would require all websites to adopt age verification technology. It would ensure that children could not access pornographic content.
▶ 1:17:40Sen. Durbin: Since the supreme court last examined this issue in earnest, technological advances have demonstrated that prior methods of restricting minor axis two per knocker fee online were ineffective. Nearly 80% of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 have been exposed to pornography.
▶ 1:18:00Sen. Durbin: This is especially alarming given the unique physiological effects that pornography has on minors, effects that are much better understood, and to a much more alarming degree today than they were 20 years ago. Finally, I introduced a third bill called the app store account ability act, which would prevent underaged users from downloading apps with pornography, extreme violence, and other harmful content, will make it -- making it easier for parents to sue the gatekeepers
▶ 1:18:30Sen. Durbin: Of the content in question. Technology has advanced significantly in the last two decades. Alternate verification technology is now the least restrictive, least intrusive, and most effective means through which congress has ready access to protect our children from exposure to online pornography. Ms. goldberg, if it is ok, I would like to start with you.
▶ 1:18:56Sen. Durbin: In your view, should app stores such as the google play store and apple's app store be held legally accountable for allowing minors access to harmful content?
▶ 1:19:10Ms. Goldberg: 100%, app stores should have a duty. They are just a seller in this situation. As we have said in cases against amazon, there are standards of seller negligence. If you know you are selling an unreasonably dangerous product, there is liability.
▶ 1:19:30Sen. Lee: The same there would be if you sold a tangible physical object unsuitable to minors to someone with knowledge, or reckless disregard for their age. Professor larry -- leary, do you believe requiring age verification technology for visitors and for all people featured on websites in pornographic images, while imposing serious consequences for uploading and hosting nonconsensual pornographic content -- do you think these
▶ 1:20:00Sen. Lee: Are things that would help children?
▶ 1:20:02Ms. Graw Leary: I do think age verification. With any piece of legislation, words matter. The idea of anything that will create friction between children and their exposure to or not graffiti is an important thing, and age verification can be one of them. I think the danger here is to -- not to suggest. The danger is what I see as tech directing things away from them, often, right?
▶ 1:20:29Ms. Graw Leary: As "there is the solution." when we have to have a multitiered, multilevel approach. That is why a combination of the shield act, the defiance act, the take it down act, the no fakes act -- altogether, they provide much more protection than one or two approaches.
▶ 1:20:47Sen. Klobuchar: Thank you, grassley. It is wonderful to be here and to hear your incredible testimony. I first want to lead with you, representative guffey. Watching your family behind you, how difficult this must be, and how heartfelt your testimony was, I don't know how anyone can listen to you and not want to get something done, so I want to thank you for that.
▶ 1:21:18Sen. Klobuchar: You have described how victims of these crimes often suffer from mental health trauma. Can you elaborate on why even the threat of the nonconsensual distributional of explicit images can be tragic?
▶ 1:21:32Mr. Guffey: The threat is the most dangerous part of it, not even the sharing of the images is as bad as the threat. You are taking your deepest, darkest shame or your most private moment, and the threat of sending it out to complete strangers come in this complete vulnerability. I believe that in this country we have lost grace, and we have too often kicked people for the mistakes they make.
▶ 1:21:59Mr. Guffey: We tell our kids that everything you do online will stay with you forever. Imagine if you just took your darkest moment and just posted it online.
▶ 1:22:07Sen. Klobuchar: Exactly. Why should this be federal?
▶ 1:22:12Ms. Goldberg: On a state level, I can tell you from passing legislation, I have submitted things such as the protect act, the app store accountability act. We need help on a federal level. Section 230 is causing states to go at this 20 different directions. And until -- if 230 is not going to fix it, the states are fed up on how effective congress is.
▶ 1:22:39Ms. Goldberg: We are going to continue to try to go at it any and every way we can. It would be a lot nicer to have uniform code across the country instead of just protecting children in one state.
▶ 1:22:52Sen. Klobuchar: Like with the airplane seat rules. Having those state-by-state would be very difficult to get any results. This trip pizzuro -- Mr. pizzuro , why is it important that congress use federal law enforcement tools question senator cornyn and I have this shield act which is really important, ahead of its time. And this requires platforms to take it down immediately.
▶ 1:23:22Sen. Klobuchar: This would make sure there is criminal liability for those that are posting it. Can you talk about why that helps federal law enforcement?
▶ 1:23:31Mr. Pizzuro: The challenge becomes in investigating between state and federal. There is a lot of gaps. As an investigator, there are areas where I cannot successfully prosecute or have the actual law in order to facilitate things.
▶ 1:23:50Mr. Pizzuro: If you go to rural areas where there is not a state perspective, where there are not really the laws that -- what shield does, it feels that legislative gap in order for us to effectually do our jobs.
▶ 1:24:05Sen. Klobuchar: Good point. Another question -- the fentanyl and the drug track. The dea recently found that one third of fentanyl cases they investigated had direct ties to social media. Others like the national crime convention counsel believe that 80% of teen and young adult fentanyl poisoning can be tracked back to social media. It is not a statistic. It is lives lost.
▶ 1:24:34Sen. Klobuchar: How does recommendation by online platforms contribute to the facilitation of this?
▶ 1:24:40Mr. Pizzuro: I can tell you even going back to when I first started -- I'm not aging myself. When there were pagers and hotels -- this is just the advent of technology. With tech companies and ai algorithms, what they push, that is what they are going to see. Does not matter. I asked mehta, snap, a lot of these companies -- can you explain these algorithms? When can and no one will. It is about business.
▶ 1:25:10Mr. Pizzuro: It is about pushing that content, and that is what children are seeing. That is why they are at risk.
▶ 1:25:18Sen. Klobuchar: My last question of you, Ms. goldberg. Ever presented the victims of revenge corn, to give people a sense of those numbers. There are tens of thousands out there that never were represented. Can you discuss the challenges you faced and why passing the shield act and the takedown act will make a difference?
▶ 1:25:42Ms. Goldberg: When I started, there were three states that had laws and they wanted to blame the victims and said you should not have taken that picture in the first place. It was not until we were testifying about it and actually making people realize that liability needs to be in the hands of the offenders. There is a responsibility in being the recipient of it.
▶ 1:26:06Ms. Goldberg: But the bigger problem is that the platforms were the ones who were disturbing content at scale. Back in the old days, revenge porton could be photocopied and put on a windshield. But now, with snap chat and google and meta, one picture can be seen by millions of people. We need the uniformity.
▶ 1:26:35Ms. Goldberg: Supple closure my colleagues at the about section two under 30, which I feel strongly about. I will let that go. Thank you, chairman glass -- chairman grassley.
▶ 1:26:48Sen. Hawley: Mr. pizzuro, let me start with you. You have been working in the anti-explication space for a long time, inside and outside government. You know the trends about what we are facing online, what kids are facing online, as well or better than anybody. Is that fair to say? Would you say that csam, child sexual expectation or abuse material -- would you say there is getting to be more or less of it?
▶ 1:27:16Mr. Pizzuro: 100% more, hundreds and thousands more. I cannot even percentage it.
▶ 1:27:22Sen. Hawley: Here is a measure. In 2023, there were 104 million images and videos of suspected child abuse material uploaded onto the internet, compared to 450,000 in 2004. 104 million in the last full year for which we have data. Here is another statistic.
▶ 1:27:49Sen. Hawley: According to the national center for missing and exploited children, the number of reports of child exploitation material went from one million in 2014 to 36.2 million in 2023. In other words, it is just an enormous explosion. It is absolutely everywhere. If you are a parent -- I am the parent of three little kids.
▶ 1:28:13Sen. Hawley: If you are a parent of a victim of child sexual abuse material, and your child's image has been used -- they have been exploited online, and you have companies that have posted that content recklessly or intentionally or negligently, or -- they have done it. If you are a parent, can I sue them and get them to take it down?
▶ 1:28:37Mr. Pizzuro: Right now, no. You can soothe them, but I don't know how successful you are going to be. -- you can sue them, but I don't know how successful you are going to be.
▶ 1:28:51Sen. Hawley: So if we know the abuser and we have companies that are making money by distribute in it, and I go to the company -- say I go to the company and say this is my kid. This is online. I'm reporting it to you. I want you to take it down. Say they don't take it down. You are telling me I cannot go into court?
▶ 1:29:10Mr. Pizzuro: You are probably going to end up losing. I think that is part of the problem.
▶ 1:29:16Sen. Hawley: Is a huge problem! You are exactly correct. The state of the law is I cannot go into court and hold these companies accountable. We had testimony a few weeks ago, somebody sitting right where you are sitting, a parent, whose child was sold rugs in this case, over snap chat. This parent went in, reported to snapchat. Snapchat said we will do our best. They did nothing. The parent said I'm going to sue you.
▶ 1:29:44Sen. Hawley: The snapchat executives laughed in her face and said, you are not. Under a law prohibits you from suing us. -- federal law prohibit you from suing us. Facebook was fined by the ftc $5 billion -- 5 billion, with a b -- and their stock price went up. What does that tell you about what these companies fear? Do you think they fear these government regulatory agencies that almost never bring suits and enforcement?
▶ 1:30:12Mr. Pizzuro: Absolutely not.
▶ 1:30:15Sen. Hawley: Do you think they would fear lawsuits from parents who might get into court and get a $10 billion judgment?
▶ 1:30:20Mr. Pizzuro: For them, it is the cost of doing business.
▶ 1:30:25Sen. Hawley: Facebook paid, the stock price went up, and they went right on doing what they were doing. But I tell you what they do fear . They are absolutely terrified of a parent coming into court and getting in front of a jury, and holding them accountable. That is why it is high time, past time, that this congress gave parents the ability to do that.
▶ 1:30:47Sen. Hawley: I will say again for the approximately 3 millionth time in this committee, until congress gives parents the ability to sue, nothing will change. These companies don't care about fines. They do not care about the regulations. The companies regularly sit here and offer to write the regulations. They say we are great public citizens and would love to help you write the regulations, congress, and we promised to comply. We will write them and then we will comply. They will not comply.
▶ 1:31:18Sen. Hawley: They buy off the regulators. What they fear our juries. Senator durbin has done with his bill we worked on together to give parents the right to get into court and have their day in court is absolutely vital. I'm proud to be working with him on this. It passed unanimously on this committee last year when he was the chairman, and I look forward to reintroducing it. We will make it even stronger and better this year.
▶ 1:31:41Sen. Hawley: I will say again there is nothing more important this congress can do than to stop this, to give parents and victims the right to get into court and hold these companies accountable. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:31:52Chair Grassley: Thank you.
▶ 1:31:55Sen. Hirono: Thank, Mr. chairman. Thank you all for testifying. Representative guffey, our hearts go out to you. We have been here many times already. Yes, I agree we have to do something about section 230. One of the things that Mr. lee mentioned -- before I get to it, the enforcement is really important.
▶ 1:32:25Sen. Hirono: I want to note that last week when I was questioning president trump's nominee for deputy attorney general, I noted that protecting children online is an issue that unifies the members of this committee, as you can see. That is why I was disappointed at his nonanswer to one of my questions.
▶ 1:32:45Sen. Hirono: I explained that if we want to protect children, the last thing we should do is fire prosecutors who fight child exploitation, and impose a hiring freeze that stops them -- that stops them from filling these vacancies. But that is exactly what is happening. I think we should note the environment in which we are havinghis hearing.
▶ 1:33:18Sen. Hirono: Moreover, there was a funding freeze briefly that cut off funding to internet crimes against children task forces that fight child expectation in every state. Child expectation is a multifaceted issue. I want to get back to professor leary, who said that states ought to have the right to go after child expectation in court, and they are not able to do so because of section 230.
▶ 1:33:52Sen. Hirono: Does that cover criminal as well as civil prosecutions by states?
▶ 1:33:58Ms. Graw Leary: It has been interpreted that way. The states -- the way it has been interpreted is there is language in section 230 in the communications decency act which talks about that -- not supporting a state law in contravention of section 230. Courts have interpreted that as that means you cannot enforce your state criminal laws, which was an attempt in the dark cases.
▶ 1:34:28Ms. Graw Leary: I assume it would happen in civil cases under the c1 provisions of the statute.
▶ 1:34:36Sen. Hirono: You would support legislation at the federal level that would allow the states to enforce their own child protection laws?
▶ 1:34:43Ms. Graw Leary: 100%, and I believe my written testimony has a quote from the letters from the national attorneys generals, laying out -- speaking of unanimity, I don't know exactly how you can have over 50 attorneys general. I believe it is the territories as well. They are all in agreement on this.
▶ 1:35:04Sen. Hirono: And you would agree that we need to do something that would enable the states to support their own laws?
▶ 1:35:13Mr. Guffey: I would certainly agree with that. That is one of the tools in the toolbelt. States need to have the tools.
▶ 1:35:23Sen. Hirono: Ms. goldberg, you noted briefly the ninth circuit and their decision in a case you were involved with. Could you provide some background on the case and how section 230 was involved? I think this demonstrates the state of the law.
▶ 1:35:44Ms. Goldberg: The case is called doe v. Grindr. It accuses the dating app grindr of advertising to children, using instagram and tiktok, with child models in school settings, and luring them onto the dating act. -- dating app.
▶ 1:36:05Ms. Goldberg: As I said in my complaint, were statistics that 50% of gay kids who are sexually active have their first sexual experience with an adult that they meet on grindr. There are no age verifications. It turns a blind eye to the fact there are so many kids that use the product and are recommended to adults. I claimed this was a defective product.
▶ 1:36:31Ms. Goldberg: Grindr, because they knew about the problem, as I stated in my lawsuit, were refusing to institute any sort of age verifications. We were also condoning trafficking. The case got thrown out by the district court, and that was confirmed yesterday by the ninth circuit. I never got to go to discovery. The book hirono it was thrown out because of section 230?
▶ 1:36:56Ms. Goldberg: And because of the incredibly high knowledge standard of actual knowledge that they were imposing, which they did not have to impose, but they imposed.
▶ 1:37:09Sen. Hirono: I support the general proposition that anyone who gets injured by someone else's actions ought to be able to pursue legal remedies. Therefore I agree that we need to bring section 230 in unity somehow, and still pay attention to the unintended consequences that may flow from that kind of a change. But it is not where we ought to be. This is a growing problem.
▶ 1:37:40Sen. Hirono: Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:37:44Sen. Kennedy: Thank you, senator. I believe I am next. Representative, I am sorry. Your boy is proud of you. You are doing good work.
▶ 1:37:59Mr. Guffey: Thank you.
▶ 1:38:01Sen. Kennedy: My late father used to tell me that you will never know love until you know the love of a child. I don't know what I would do if something happens my boy. I'm so sorry.
▶ 1:38:16Mr. Guffey: Thank you so much.
▶ 1:38:19Sen. Kennedy: Mr. pizzuro, social media is now a big part of childhood, isn't it?
▶ 1:38:28Mr. Pizzuro: Yes.
▶ 1:38:33Sen. Kennedy: Can we agree that big parts of social media have become cesspools of snark?
▶ 1:38:42Mr. Pizzuro: I can probably attest to that, yes.
▶ 1:38:46Sen. Kennedy: Can we agree that social media has lowered the cost of being an s-h -- an a-hole?
▶ 1:39:04Sen. Kennedy: Can we agree that big parts of social media have become cesspools of sexual explication?
▶ 1:39:12Mr. Pizzuro: For sure.
▶ 1:39:15Sen. Kennedy: I assume you would agree with me if I said that social media has lowered the cost of being a pedophile.
▶ 1:39:20Mr. Pizzuro: Absolutely. They have easy access.
▶ 1:39:26Sen. Kennedy: You are familiar with the national center for missing and exploited children's cyber tip line?
▶ 1:39:33Mr. Pizzuro: Yes.
▶ 1:39:37Sen. Kennedy: Are the social media companies required to report instances of child sexual explication to the national center?
▶ 1:39:44Mr. Pizzuro: Of what they see.
▶ 1:39:48Sen. Kennedy: So the law says that social media companies have got to report these instances of sexual exploitation to the national center. First, they have to look, don't they?
▶ 1:39:58Mr. Pizzuro: Yes.
▶ 1:40:01Sen. Kennedy: Do they make any money when they look?
▶ 1:40:03Mr. Pizzuro: No, if you look at the apple statistics I gave before --
▶ 1:40:11Sen. Kennedy: They are not paid to look.
▶ 1:40:12Mr. Pizzuro: No.
▶ 1:40:15Sen. Kennedy: In fact, they want people coming to their social media platforms.
▶ 1:40:18Mr. Pizzuro: More users, more money.
▶ 1:40:21Sen. Kennedy: They want eyeballs so they can sell advertisements. For them to look is inconsistent with their economic interest, isn't it?
▶ 1:40:29Mr. Pizzuro: Correct.
▶ 1:40:32Sen. Kennedy: Once they look and they find it, then, they have to report it to the national center. Is that right? Are they paid to report it to the national center?
▶ 1:40:42Mr. Pizzuro: Absolutely not.
▶ 1:40:48Sen. Kennedy: How many instances -- I know this is a difficult question. How many instances do you think of sexual explication of children are occurring and being either looked for and/or reported by the social media companies?
▶ 1:41:04Mr. Pizzuro: I don't have statistics, but I can tell you that there is a lot of esp's that don't even actually report. Some over report. Some don't report at all. That is part of the challenge. And secondary, it is voluntary, right? Whatever they give them, there is more uniformity in that.
▶ 1:41:27Sen. Kennedy: What happens if they don't look or they don't report? Are they punished?
▶ 1:41:30Mr. Pizzuro: No.
▶ 1:41:34Sen. Kennedy: You are familiar with the safer program?
▶ 1:41:36Mr. Pizzuro: A little bit.
▶ 1:41:39Sen. Kennedy: It is a tool. They use ai to scan conversations and look for patterns that might be sexual explication of children. It is not the only algorithm out there. Do social media companies use that?
▶ 1:41:57Mr. Pizzuro: I don't know how many do. I don't know if they are using technology, but they should.
▶ 1:42:03Sen. Kennedy: Are they required to use it?
▶ 1:42:04Mr. Pizzuro: No.
▶ 1:42:08Sen. Kennedy: We've got to do something. This is my last question. Do you find it ironic that all of these people in big tech who dreamed about and talked about creating a utopia have managed to generate more hate and more harm than anyone could ever have
▶ 1:42:41Sen. Kennedy: Possibly imagined? All to make money.
▶ 1:42:45Mr. Pizzuro: And lots of money they made.
▶ 1:42:50Sen. Kennedy: Do you find that ironic?
▶ 1:42:51Mr. Pizzuro: Very.
▶ 1:42:55Sen. Kennedy: Thank you all for being here. Senator blumenthal is not only next. He is the only one left. But it is nice to see.
▶ 1:43:05Sen. Blumenthal: Am I recognized? Or merely --
▶ 1:43:13Sen. Kennedy: I'm the chairman, blumenthal! I'm looking forward to your questioning and I'm going to turn the devil over. -- the gavel over. To senator blackburn.
▶ 1:43:37Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you, chair blackburn. Your strength makes an enormous difference. I know how strongly you supported the kids online safety act and I know you are deeply -- I am deeply grateful to you for your support and your activism, going to louisiana, for example, so you could talk to present a disk police and representative speaker johnson on behalf of that bill.
▶ 1:44:06Sen. Blumenthal: You did an article that I would like to have entered into the record, if there is no objection. And there seems to be none. When you went to see representative scully's -- Rep.
▶ 1:44:27Santos: Gleason representative johnson, were you given an opportunity to talk -- when you went to see representatives scalise and johnson, were you able to talk with them?
▶ 1:44:39Mr. Guffey: No, we met with staff, but even at the hill, we were unable to meet with representatives.
▶ 1:44:46Sen. Blumenthal: Would you like to meet with them? We will arrange it, hoping they will support the bill this time.
▶ 1:44:52Mr. Guffey: I 1000% agree.
▶ 1:44:56Sen. Blumenthal: Why don't you tell us as a parent, but also as a -- as an advocate and the author of that article, why you think some of the arguments made against kosa based on a supposed free-speech thesis are incorrect ?
▶ 1:45:20Mr. Guffey: I believe it is all follow the money. If you look at big tech and their lobby and look at the narratives that get put out there, and look at the representatives that fight against it, and you follow the money of where it ends up, I believe that as an elected official -- I see it myself. You are often worried about what this will look like.
▶ 1:45:43Mr. Guffey: That is one of the reasons why whenever I was presenting it I used the phrase we have too many politicians worried about their next election, instead of leaders worried about the next generation. I believe it is a false narrative put out there. The argument has been had over and over. People will turn around and share a false narrative.
▶ 1:46:04Sen. Blumenthal: I think the united states has recognized this narrative through a strong bipartisan vote here. I am hoping we will have the same support again. I think senator blackburn, who has been such a steadfast partner in this effort. I would like to turn to professor leary. I think I misattributed the article to representative guffey.
▶ 1:46:32Sen. Blumenthal: Maybe you can expand on his response on that free-speech false narrative.
▶ 1:46:37Ms. Graw Leary: Sure, thank you, senator. The first thing about free speech is -- first, as you know, I believe the article you are referring to, the op-ed myself and other scholars wrote this piece. It really dispelled these arguments about kosa and that we see again. If you look back in history, it is interesting to look at some of what tech has said over the years. I can go back to 2014.
▶ 1:47:08Ms. Graw Leary: They were making this argument. We can go back to 1996. They told us the communications decency act was going to ruin free-speech. Then they said it about the save act. Then they said it about sus to foster -- sesta/fosta. The first amendment is designed to inform us on how to handle sticky issues. It is not a reason to not engage in legislation. It is being used in that manner.
▶ 1:47:38Ms. Graw Leary: There is a distinction between speech and conduct. And specifically with kosa, kosa addressed conduct, not content. The speech argument was particularly misplaced with regard to that piece of legislation.
▶ 1:47:54Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you. In fact, kosa's conduct involved in product design. There is no more limitation on free speech than there would be if and when, because it does, the federal government regulates the safety of the design of an automobile, or a toaster, or a washing machine.
▶ 1:48:23Sen. Blumenthal: If they explode, there is liability. It is not free-speech to design an effective and harmful product. It is conduct. There is no censorship, no blocking of content. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you, madam chair.
▶ 1:48:42Sen. Blackburn: Thank you. Professor leary, I'm going to stay with you for my question. I appreciate so much that op-ed that you put together, and the difference you are making their. It was not a free-speech infringement. This is, as senator blumenthal said, product design. As you said, conduct.
▶ 1:49:09Sen. Blackburn: What we know the reason that meta and google and the groups lobbied just millions of dollars in money against this is because they have assigned a dollar value to each and every kid. And I think the dollar value is $270. So our kids are the product. It is so unseemly.
▶ 1:49:39Sen. Blackburn: To me, it is absolutely disgusting that they devalue the lives of young people in this manner. I want to come to you. Senator klobuchar and I have the national human database act, which would establish a database at doj's office for victims of crimes, and incentivizes states to collect and to enter and
▶ 1:50:13Sen. Blackburn: Share their data. What we are trying to do is get a full picture of what is happening in each of the 50 states when it comes to human trafficking. We have had a tough time doing this and finding the people behind these human trafficking rings. I know your organization, raven, has been supportive of the bill.
▶ 1:50:42Sen. Blackburn: I would like you to talk for just a minute about why having a national database is so vitally important to breaking this modern-day slavery.
▶ 1:50:53Mr. Pizzuro: The more data we have, the more we are able to understand and see and react to it. That is part of the challenge. As states, we are so fragmented. We are getting data from just certain areas. The more data we are able to collect, the more we are able to put a come from and said plan and go after certain trafficking.
▶ 1:51:21Sen. Blackburn: I want you to touch on ai generated csam. What we hear from law enforcement is they are having to sift through so many images to figure out what is ai generated and what is actual.
▶ 1:51:34Mr. Pizzuro: That is a challenge. Right now, you cannot detect and investigate. I cannot tell the difference between what a real image is and what is not a real image. Technology exists now. I can make those images, however I want. I can make a child from an adult.
▶ 1:51:55Mr. Pizzuro: The challenge becomes that now I can take your images off of social media or open profiles, and turn that person into a child, or have sexually explicit images. The challenge is going to be we cannot see it unless we have the software capabilities in order to actually do that, which we don't have.
▶ 1:52:18Sen. Blackburn: I appreciate that. Senator thune, klobuchar, and I introduced an act to deal with ai generated voice and visual lightness of individuals. We think that this will play an important role in a remedy for ai generated csam. Representative guffey, I would love to get your thoughts on that.
▶ 1:52:46Mr. Guffey: On the no fakes act, I personally love it. I have actually resubmitted the use of a bill very similar within the state. I love the idea of using the name, image, and likeness. I think that is a very easy thing to hit. As we talk about using ai generated technology, one of the problems we have is the statement that this is not a real person and therefore is not really a crime.
▶ 1:53:15Mr. Guffey: Bills such as name, image, and likeness protects our citizens, as opposed to focusing solely on what the image is. It protects the citizens.
▶ 1:53:25Sen. Blackburn: Let me ask you this, and could gradually -- and congratulations on getting gavin's law passed. Is there a way you can amend provisions of no fakes onto gavin's law and begin to expand the protections there at the state level?
▶ 1:53:43Mr. Guffey: In south carolina, unfortunately no.
▶ 1:53:47Sen. Blackburn: It is gone to be separate. You will have to have a group of bills to do this. Ok. I am over time. I'm going to recognize senator schiff and turn the gavel.
▶ 1:54:03Sen. Schiff: Thank you for being here. Mr. guffey, appreciate your advocacy and I want to express my condolences for the loss of your son. I cannot imagine the, you and your family went through. I appreciate you are taking the trauma and using it to protect the other families.
▶ 1:54:27Sen. Schiff: I have not had a chance as a new member of the senate to really study the multiple approaches of the various bills, although some I have supported in the house. But I wanted to ask you, professor. Reestablished section 230 for the reasons I think you implied. It was a nascent industry. They urged us to do so so we would not stifle innovation.
▶ 1:54:53Sen. Schiff: They also make the argument they would not moderate content because they would be sued if they did. It may be a time where they moderated content, but those days need to be over. It certainly was not enacted because it was believed necessary for the first amendment. The first amendment stands on its own, on two feet. In the absence of 230, companies could still lead a first amendment defense to any case.
▶ 1:55:28Sen. Schiff: What is your preferred approach? Is it a repeal of 230? Is it changing it from immunity to some form of defense? Is it to cabin 230 in some way by narrowing the scope? What are the merits of the various approaches?
▶ 1:55:47Ms. Graw Leary: Thank you, senator. I would say a couple of things. I would say that there was discussion in the deep background about this free internet nascent industry, and when we look at the policies and the findings at the beginning of section 230 of the communications decency act, there is language to that. But I would repeat the overwhelming background and discussion was about the child protection piece.
▶ 1:56:18Ms. Graw Leary: Therefore, I think that the concern with the entire thing is to keep the c2 language, which gives protection to a platform if they -- specifically if they remove anything they consider to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable. That is all they need.
▶ 1:56:46Ms. Graw Leary: They do not need see one, which is what -- they do not need c1m this defect out absolute -- they do not need c1, this de facto absolute. Holding them liable when they host this material, I think that has been discussed at length as well. I think that those and some of the other things I have listed -- I don't want to use up too much of your time -- all work together to respond to the complex problem.
▶ 1:57:17Sen. Schiff: Council, your representation of clients in this area, do you believe it would be the most helpful in terms of making sure you can get the discovery you need? And that we have established the right protections in terms of the platforms?
▶ 1:57:40Ms. Goldberg: We are long overdue to just abolish section 230. But what is important is that clients need to get to discovery so they can actually know the extent of the problem. The only way we can do that is if the standard is reasonable for parents to plead.
▶ 1:58:00Ms. Goldberg: If we have to show that the company knew about that picture, that exact victim, that exact perpetrator, there is no way a client is going to be able to overcome a motion to dismiss and get into discovery. We need to have standards like negligence, which the law already affords in almost all action.
▶ 1:58:22Sen. Schiff: Let me ask you this question. I don't think there is any doubt that if the companies devoted their technological capability to try to solve this problem, they can make enormous gains. There would not be a way to eliminate the problem altogether. They could prove effective. What would you propose the new standard be?
▶ 1:58:53Sen. Schiff: If it is not possible to completely do away with this standard, how would you define the standard of care that you would expect the industry to follow, given it has not had to follow any standard in the protections of 230?
▶ 1:59:08Ms. Goldberg: Let me quickly answer. These are products, so strict liability should apply here. If these companies have created a defective product, then all users should be able to sue them if the product injured them. >> thank you, senator. I appreciate you being here today. I have been so impressed with this committee.
▶ 1:59:37Ms. Goldberg: I am a senator all of four weeks, so get ready. I bring to it with an array of passions I have acquired not just as an attorney general, and as a mother. I am so impressed with the topics, and specifically this one. It was shocking to me that the senate was able to move forward pretty unanimously on some protections for children, and they ran right into the house that did not go along with some of those things. I'm hoping we can change that.
▶ 2:00:09Ms. Goldberg: As an attorney general, I have fought in court against many of the platforms. I investigated platforms for harms to children. I am a mother dealing with this now. I tell people all the time that it is really hard to be one of the first generations of parents trying to parent children, and we don't understand what we are doing, because we don't understand the technology to the degree they do. In fact, when I am going through some of the controls, I often have to ask my kid what that means. Which seems to defeat the purpose. But here we are.
▶ 2:00:42Ms. Goldberg: If I can look at the privacy concerns of children, the harm to children, whether it is addiction or materials they never would have been exposed to in the past, that they now have ready access to -- one of the things I want to talk about is the access to our children by predators and bad actors. I think that is the third lane we read about repeatedly in the paper every single day.
▶ 2:01:08Ms. Goldberg: In my state, from doctors to predators to you name it, they are getting access to our children. Parents in the past could lock our children's bedroom doors and know they were safe at night, that is not the reality anymore. In my own child's school, there were five teenage boys -- a woman was arrested for posing as one and luring them and molesting them online, using snapchat and tiktok.
▶ 2:01:36Ms. Goldberg: When you engage with the platforms, they will often deny that this is happening. It is happening. The best people that can represent that is the parents, what is happening to their children in their homes. I really commend you as a fellow parent for taking your pain and channeling that into frustration and anger, because that is what is going to get the attention of lawmakers.
▶ 2:02:05Ms. Goldberg: We have tried to get the attention of the platforms. We have talked a lot about what needs to be done to enforce restrictions and them acting on their own. But we need to talk about what is to be done. What I am specifically concerned about -- I would open this up to whoever wants to answer this question. What is the thing we can do as lawmakers right now to stop predators from getting access to our children?
▶ 2:02:34Ms. Goldberg: Let me start down there and then we will come to you.
▶ 2:02:38Mr. Guffey: The comment was made that we essentially have different laws for the outside world than we do for the inside world. If I had a storage facility and I stored only guns in there, U.S. attorney general -- someone was breaking the law and I said the majority are law-abiding citizens, but we also have terrorists and we are going to store guns for criminals -- if I told you that you had to have the digital I.d. To get into the locker, that is ludicrous.
▶ 2:03:07Mr. Guffey: That is the same way we treat csam. I believe that if you are housing csam, you should be held responsible. Nothing is going to change until we open civil liability or these are the world's richest technology companies, and yet they are immune.
▶ 2:03:26Sen. Moody: I would say if you have designed a product where you are exposing children to predators, and you cannot stop that from happening, it is a defective for -- defective product. All a parent or victim should do to sue you is to show you were harmed.
▶ 2:03:52Sen. Moody: When parents have demanded they take this law -- this off-line, they refused to take it down.
▶ 2:03:58Ms. Goldberg: Absolutely, and those cases get thrown out of court because the online platform says "I did not know about that specific incident." of course they are not going to. Or they will say I did not intend to harm that exact child.
▶ 2:04:17Sen. Moody: You have law-enforcement experience and I am grateful for that. Understanding that predators cannot get to our children through -- can get to our children online, what is one thing you would do to prevent that?
▶ 2:04:35Mr. Pizzuro: Device based verification. Shut the spigot off instead of going through different apps. The companies have this. We can stop it at the device level. That is where we prevent children from getting on some of these images and defenders getting access to those children.
▶ 2:04:54Sen. Moody: Since I am the acting chair I don't want to exceed the boundaries of time. I will turn it over to senator whitehouse.
▶ 2:05:01Sen. Whitehouse: I will close at the hearing at the end of my questions. And I have a place to be. Do not hesitate to go where you need to be. First of all, Ms. goldberg, you have said that 230 is long overdue. I believe that the day is coming soon, and a bipartisan bill will be filed by a group of members for this committee before very long.
▶ 2:05:31Sen. Whitehouse: As you also pointed out, there are standards by which to evaluate the conduct or misconduct of these big platforms that the law already affords. Everybody else has to abide by those same standards. If you produce paper, if -- if you are a newspaper, a manufacturer, an individual, we go back to the english common law that came over to the first settlers.
▶ 2:06:03Sen. Whitehouse: The idea that what representative guffey described quite well as institutions that are the richest since the inception of man, should not be bound by the law -- I adore ron wyden. He put section 230 in when these platforms were in people's garages. They have gone from that to being the richest companies since the inception of man.
▶ 2:06:32Sen. Whitehouse: I'm not going to forget that phrase. I like it. With no change in congress's response that had section 230 protection, and also repeated grotesque failure by these entities to police themselves.
▶ 2:06:54Sen. Whitehouse: It is not as if we are dealing with an array of platforms that have a demonstrated record of meeting the public interest in the safety of their product. Not at all. As a lawyer to lawyer, Ms.
▶ 2:07:11Sen. Whitehouse: Goldberg, talk a little bit about when the section 230 defense first kicks in, and what that means in terms of you and your clients actually being able to get discovery to take a deposition and find out the truth of what actually transpired?
▶ 2:07:29Ms. Goldberg: What happens is that I file a lawsuit with all my facts and everything that I can know, even though there is so much asymmetry of knowledge. I don't know the extent to which the platform knows about the exact problem, or the overall problem. I can just base it on what has happened to my client, if they are alive. Otherwise, I have to go through the parents. Immediately, within 30 days --
▶ 2:07:57Sen. Whitehouse: You file your complaint.
▶ 2:07:58Ms. Goldberg: They file a motion to dismiss, saying we are just a publishing platform. We are not a product. This is just speech. And they attempt to get it dismissed. Often, judges will do it without oral argument. And we never get to discovery. We never get the opportunity to even show or no exactly the extent to which the platform has been tolerating and making money off of this exact harm. We don't have any information about other similar incidents.
▶ 2:08:30Ms. Goldberg: Nothing.
▶ 2:08:30Sen. Whitehouse: So it is not only evading responsibility, but is a vehicle for covering up what actually took place. It would be slightly different if the section 230 dismissal motion was something you made at trial, for instance. Then you would have a full chance. But not even that.
▶ 2:08:48Ms. Goldberg: Yes. I also believe that even more terrifying to check than facing the jury I to I-- to tech then facing the jury eye to eye is discovery. Omegle shuttered their platform because they had no defense.
▶ 2:09:11Sen. Whitehouse: Discovery is a beautiful thing. Senator? >> thank you, Mr. chair. Mr. guffey, I want to let you know that my heart goes out to you for you and your family's experience. I appreciate your willingness to be here today to share your testimony.
▶ 2:09:33Sen. Whitehouse: I want to draw on my colleagues attention to a relatively new consumer product, character-based ai chatbot apps. Many of these services have been flooded with age inappropriate chatbot's, which may cause young users to be exposed to sexual or suggestive ai generated imagery or conversations.
▶ 2:10:02Sen. Whitehouse: As a father of three school-age children, this is personal. Further conversation with these chatbots can end tragically, as we have heard reports. Since 2023, at least two individuals have died by suicide following extensive conversations with ai chatbot's. The risk is real. Mr.
▶ 2:10:23Sen. Whitehouse: Guffey, how would you recommend that this committee begin to think about -- think through the risks posed by this emerging consumer product category?
▶ 2:10:32Mr. Guffey: Whenever it comes to ai, I would have to lean more on some of the other panelists appear and their expertise when addressing chatbots. Chatbots is something new I have really just started looking into. On the legal side, I am not an attorney.
▶ 2:10:57Mr. Guffey: I'm an angry parent that tries to throw it against the wall, whereas the attorneys have to say this is what will hold up in court.
▶ 2:11:05Sen. Padilla: You have to figure out the legalese. But given your experience, is a chatbot the next iteration? We know what the technology was when you and I were much younger. What children have to contend to today, we can only imagine what is coming.
▶ 2:11:24Mr. Guffey: That is the exact problem. That is not just the problem of the day. Aztec is evolving, our laws won't be fast enough to keep up. I believe that having that liability and being able to hold these companies responsible for what they are presenting -- if we instead of taking online services and treating it as a service, if we can simply treat it as a product, we can hold them to consumer protections.
▶ 2:11:51Mr. Pizzuro: If I may, I think we should think about the international context. The recent ai summit -- Mr.
▶ 2:11:58Balkam: The recent ai summit in paris was called the ai security summit instead of the ai safety summit that had taken place in the u.k. And korea. There has been a shift away from the prevailing thought that we must make these products safe. Instead, and particularly this administration, is urging the vast and quick expansion of these tools. I think you have a role and your colleagues have a role to bring that focus back. I dearly hope you do.
▶ 2:12:29Ms. Goldberg: One of my close friends, matthew bergman, is actually litigating a case against ai, where they bought encouraged addictive behavior and ultimately lead the child to die by suicide.
▶ 2:12:46Ms. Goldberg: I think what we will find is that there is possibility that we will perceive this as the administration's own speech, and it will not overturn a section 230 challenge. Sen. padilla good point. I would invite all of you to respond to the same question after the hearing, and submit answers to questions for the record.
▶ 2:13:17Ms. Goldberg: If you want one more topic -- senator graham is on his way back. Last congress, we had a hearing very similar to this sitting in front of us. Testifying was actually the ceo's of the five largest social media companies, testifying to the committee. I had the opportunity then to ask to each of them the parental tools that they offer.
▶ 2:13:48Ms. Goldberg: I think all of them offered some parental tool to help parents help minors safely navigate the use of the respective services. I asked them to describe what those tools were, and what the adoption and use rates were. You can have tools and protections out there and can debate whether it is efficient or not.
▶ 2:14:15Ms. Goldberg: If people are not using it, what is the point? Sadly, they did not share how widely used these tools were. They are very big into data. What data they did show demonstrated to us that the usage rates were actually low.
▶ 2:14:37Ms. Goldberg: The conclusion, unavoidable, is that the industry is not doing enough to let parents know what is available. We are not investing enough into the understanding of why these protections are not being adopted at greater rates.
▶ 2:14:58Ms. Goldberg: In your testimony, you observed that these controls would better serve minors and their guardians if they were standardized, interoperable, and unified between apps, devices, and brands. How do we make that a reality?
▶ 2:15:13Mr. Balkam: I often use the example of the on mobile industry. In the 1950's and 1960's, if you got out of one car and got into another, you might not know where the blinkers and the light switches were. Even the logos were different for different carmakers. Laws came into place in the 60's. When you get into a new rental car, you know exactly where the lights are. The symbols are all the same.
▶ 2:15:42Mr. Balkam: I would like to see the industry come together, ideally voluntarily, perhaps with supervision, to standardize the ways in which parental controls and online safety tools which teens and young people used to stay private, and block, often without apparent knowledge. Let's have a standardized way of keeping our kids safe. Teens can keep themselves safe.
▶ 2:16:11Mr. Balkam: Something that is not as confusing as we have got at the moment.
▶ 2:16:16Sen. Padilla: Industry standards is not a new context -- concept. It either gets imposed and industry comes away kicking and screaming, or they can come together and put together a model that is transparent and that works or that we can measure and hold them accountable. It has been a long morning for all of you.
▶ 2:16:46Sen. Padilla: Very much appreciate your participation in today's hearing, and the work you do and the perspectives you offered. It falls upon me to thank all of our witnesses and to remind folks that the hearing record will remain open for one week for statements to be submitted into the record. Questions may be submitted by senators by 5:00 p.m. On wednesday, february 26.
▶ 2:17:18Sen. Padilla: Unless there is anything further from the nameplates, his hearing is adjourned.