Sexting & Sextortion Scams

In a stunning moment during a congressional hearing over alleged online harms to children, the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, turned to parents of victims on the Senate floor and apologized.

“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said as parents held up photos of their children who have died following sexual exploitation or harassment via social media.

“No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

The Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, offered similar condolences to parents whose children were able to access illegal drugs on Snapchat. Parents of more than 60 teenagers filed suit in late 2023 against Snap for allegedly facilitating their children’s acquisitions of drugs that were used in overdoses.

“I’m so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies. We work very hard to block all search terms related to drugs on our platform,” Spiegel said.

Zuckerberg and Spiegel were among five executives being grilled in Congress on Wednesday in a hearing titled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.

The hearing was called to “examine and investigate the plague of online child sexual exploitation”, according to a statement from the US Senate judiciary committee.

Also attendance were chief executive officers including Linda Yaccarino of X (formerly Twitter), Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, and Jason Citron of Discord.……..

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ld-sexual-exploitation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other