The Brave Movement reactive statement to: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the online child sexual exploitation crisis

On January 31st 2024 the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis”. For millions of children and adolescents, and parents and caregivers, in the United States and around the world, the rapid rise in online sexual abuse and exploitation is a crisis, a hidden pandemic.

The CEOs of Meta, Discord, TikTok, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter) were called on to testify and answer questions regarding  their companies’ lack of action to protect children on their platforms.

Senators convened the hearing to build support for a suite of bills intended to expand protections for children online, including a measure that would allow victims of child sexual abuse to sue platforms that enable exploitation. The CEO’s were met with an overflowing room of parents holding pictures of children who have been victims to abuse and exploitations on their platforms.

It is estimated that one in six people are victims of online child sexual abuse before the age of 18 years old. This is an area of childhood sexual violence which has been rising at an alarmingly exponential rate over the last few years. In fact, reports of child sexual abuse material on online platforms grew from 32 million in 2022 to a record high of more than 36 million in 2023. These numbers do not even portray the true scale with a lack of reporting and identification resulting in numbers widely regarded to be millions less than the reality.

Survivors of childhood and adolescent sexual violence were in attendance at the hearing, to raise awareness of the scale and impact of the issue, share their perspectives and call for the leaders of these technology giants to prioritize child protection. As noted by a survivor leader, Tom Krumins, who was representing the Brave Movement at the hearing:

There is an increasing belief that the technology is available to protect children on these platforms and that the problem lies with leaders choosing not to take necessary actions. Mr. Zuckerberg (Meta), Ms. Yaccarino (X), Mr. Chew (TikTok), Mr. Spiegel (Snapchat), and Mr. Citron (Discord) were questioned about their respective companies’ efforts, and stances on a suite of bills that have been developed to protect children.

The well rehearsed CEO’s did little to show they are posed to take action at the level needed to address the crisis. Time after time all the CEO’s refused to say they would support bills that have been developed by the committee, while at the same time using their opening statements to note the importance of legislation to end online sexual exploitation.