The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X, previously known as Twitter, testified sooner than the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the ranking Republican on the committee, made clear in his opening remark why the tech leaders have been there as he accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of having “blood on your hands.”

“The Republicans will answer the call. All people. Every one of us is ready to work with you and our Democratic colleagues on this committee to show to the American people that while Washington is indisputably damaged, there’s a ray of hope,” Graham mentioned in his opening commentary adding:

And it’s here. It lies together with your youngsters. After years of working on this issue with you and others, I’ve come to conclude the following: social media corporations, as they’re at the moment designed and operate, are bad products.

Graham went on to inform the story of considered one of his teenage parts who was once extorted on-line and ultimately killed himself.
“And as things go at that stage in existence, he gave her some photos, compromising sexual photos. And it turned out that she was a part of an extortion group in Nigeria. They threatened the young man that in the event you don’t provide us cash, we’re going to expose these photographs. He gave them cash, however it wasn’t sufficient. They stored threatening and he killed himself,” Graham explained, including:

These are bastards by way of any recognized definition. Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies ahead of us. I do know you don’t imply it to be so, however you may have blood in your palms!

You will have a product. You have got a product that’s killing people. After we had cigarets killing people, we did some about it. Possibly, now not sufficient, you’re going to talk about guns. We have the ATF. Nothing here. There’s no longer a damn factor anyone can do about it. That you would be able to’t be sued.

Now, Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn, who’ve been just like the dynamic duo here, have found emails from your firm where they warned you about these things and you made up our minds to not hire forty five people that might do a greater job of policing this. So the bottom line is you could’t be sued. You will have to be. And these emails would be nice for punitive damages. But the court docket is closed.

Every American abused by using all of the companies in entrance of me, of all of the people in The usa lets supply blanket liability safety to. This will be the last group I’d decide. It is now time to repeal section 230. This committee is made of the ideologically most different folks you want to to find. We’ve come collectively via your leadership, Mr. Chairman, to pass 5 payments to handle the issue of exploitation of youngsters.

“What do you do with unhealthy products? Either allow proceedings. You’ve got statutory protections to give protection to shoppers, or you’ve gotten a fee of types to keep watch over the industry in query, to take your license away – when you’ve got a license or to superb you,” Graham continued, including:

None of that exists right here. We are living in an American 2024 where there is no regulatory physique dealing with probably the most winning, biggest firms within the history of the sector. They are able to’t be sued. And there’s now not one law in the e book that’s significant defending the American shopper. Instead of that, we’re in a great place.

Graham concluded by way of joking about how this problem even managed to carry him at the side of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to cosponsor a invoice. He vowed bipartisan action to get his regulation passed and ended with a few brief remarks on the nice social media has delivered to society, while arguing that the government must eventually take care of the dangerous it has wrought as well.

Watch the clip above.

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