Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has agreed to testify at a Dec. 8 hearing in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee. He should come prepared with some answers, or a flak jacket, given the committee chair's framing of the hearing.
“After bombshell reports about Instagram’s toxic impacts, we want to hear straight from the company’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms that push poisonous content to children driving them down rabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” said Committee Chairman Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who announced the bipartisan hearing along with ranking member Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
Blumenthal has been a central player in Congress' beat down of Big Tech, particularly Instagram parent Meta (formerly Facebook), and the revelation of internal research on the impact of Instagram on youth.
Blumenthal said he appreciated Mosseri's agreement to testify voluntarily but suggested he would appreciate it even more if Mosseri came armed with "reforms and solutions."
Blackburn said it was time for action given that "Instagram’s repeated failures to protect children’s privacy have already been exposed before the U.S. Senate."
The Dec. 8 hearing will be the fifth Blumenthal/Blackburn co-production looking at social media's impact on children and young people. ■
