"Heads" of social networks, heard: formal apologies and real dramas

The curtain is gradually lifting and the ugly side behind social networks is increasingly visible. Five billion people move through these networks, and control, with all the Artificial Intelligence that exists, is difficult to achieve. Abuses, manipulations, messes kept rolling due to the lack of interest, the desire for profit or the technical impossibility regarding the stricter control of images and messages. Excuses abound, but there are far more minor victims. As concrete complaints multiply, with real victims of the virtual world, things have come seriously into the sights of the authorities, and the future of these networks no longer looks as bright as it did a decade ago. It is no less true that there is a camp that every time throws the "freedom of expression" into the balance and that believes that the restrictions imposed from a certain direction do harm in another.

A hearing was held in the US Congress in which harsh accusations were launched and apologies were demanded from the highest level, five directors of large companies in the field being present. Beyond the apology, the head of Facebook was asked directly if he would pay, from the billions earned, compensation for the victims of sexual abuse and harassment, and the answer was not at all in the margin of "Yes or No". Moreover, it is obvious that the heads of the social networks are trying their best to minimize the problems.

During the hearing in Congress regarding the alleged online harm caused to children, Mark Zuckerberg, the general director of Meta, addressed the parents of the victims in the Senate and apologized, The Guardian reports. "I'm sorry for everything you've all been through," Zuckerberg said as parents held up photos of their children who died from sexual exploitation or social media harassment. go through what your families went through and that's why we're investing so much and will continue to push industry-wide to make sure no one has to go through what your families went through."

Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel offered similar condolences to parents whose children accessed illegal drugs on Snapchat. The parents of more than 60 teenagers filed a lawsuit in late 2023 against Snap for allegedly facilitating their children's purchase of drugs that were used in overdoses. "I am very sorry that we did not manage to prevent these tragedies. We are working hard to block all drug-related search terms on our platform," said Spiegel. Zuckerberg and Spiegel were among five executives questioned by Congress on Wednesday in a hearing titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis." The hearing was convened to "examine and investigate the scourge of online sexual exploitation of children," according to a statement from the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Executives were also present, including X's Linda Yaccarino (formerly Twitter), TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, and Discord's Jason Citron. The way Zuckerberg started the discussion caused a buzz in the room: "The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between the use of social media and the fact that young people have worse mental health." The Senate was filled with victims' families and lawyers, Lindsey Graham (Republican senator) declaring that "we have a large audience, the largest I have seen in this room". The Republican senator from South Carolina accused social media companies of "destroying lives and threatening democracy itself." "I know you don't want it to be this way, but you have blood on your hands," he told the directors. In opening remarks, Sen. Dick Durbin (Democrat) said that combating the dangers children face online was one of his "top priorities" as chairman of the committee and that online child sexual exploitation is "a crisis in America". Durbin told executives that their social media platforms and messaging apps have "given predators powerful new tools to sexually exploit children." "Their design choices, their failures to invest adequately in trust and safety, their constant pursuit of engagement and profit at the expense of everyone's basic safety put our children and grandchildren at risk," Durbin said.

Executives appearing before Congress repeatedly emphasized the controls and tools they have introduced to manage children's online experiences and mitigate harm. In prepared remarks, Zuckerberg said Meta has introduced more than 30 such tools over the past eight years, including controls that allow parents to set time limits on app use and see who their children are watching and engaging with online. . He added that Meta has spent $20 billion on safety and security since 2016 and has hired about 40,000 people to address such concerns. "We are committed to protecting young people from abuse within our services, but this is an ongoing challenge," he said, adding: "As we improve our defenses in one area, offenders change their tactics and we have to we find new answers".

The fact that criminals are always one step ahead is no excuse for companies, and denying the problems is in no way a solution. Not even in the virtual world.

Such hearings will continue in the next period as well, with the intention of tougher regulations of the networks' activity.

• 100,000 victims daily

In the middle of last month, information appeared that contained the figures of a real disaster. Meta estimates that approximately 100,000 children who use Facebook and Instagram experience daily online sexual harassment, including through "images of the genital organs of adults", according to the company's internal documents made public, reported The Guardian. The published court filing includes several allegations against the company, based on information received by the New Mexico attorney general's office from Meta employee presentations and communications between employees. The documents describe an incident in 2020 when the 12-year-old daughter of an Apple executive was approached via IG Direct (Instagram direct Messenger), Instagram's messaging product. "This is the kind of thing that annoys Apple to the point of threatening to pull us from the App Store," fumed a Meta employee, according to the documents. A senior Meta employee described how his own daughter was approached via Instagram in testimony before the US Congress late last year. His efforts to resolve the issue were ignored, he said. The filing is the latest in a lawsuit filed by the New Mexico attorney general's office on December 5, 2023, which alleges that Meta's social networks have become marketplaces for child predators.

Raul Torrez, the state attorney general, accused Meta of allowing adults to find, send messages to children and engage in sexual grooming. The company denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

• The Minister of Research, Digitization and Innovation, in discussions with officials from large technology companies

The Minister of Research, Digitization and Innovation, Bogdan Ivan, stated that he had discussions with officials from the big technology companies through which he tries to ensure that Romania will not be the target of massive waves of deepfakes in the coming period. Bogdan Ivan also spoke about the possibility of a Google data center being created in Romania in the near future: "There are discussions at the highest level with the big technology companies, especially with those from the United States of America, for the development of new capacities and capabilities on the territory of Romania, in an extraordinary opening of the Government of Romania and Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. (...) I hope that in the shortest time I can give you some concrete data, in this case by the middle of 2024, let's come up with some concrete information. At the moment, given the sensitive information discussed, we do not have the consent of the other partners to disclose this data. But I guarantee you that the second we will have very clear things with any of the big technology companies that will come to invest massively in Romania, you will be the first to know, because it is in Romania's direct interest to have these capabilities on the territory Romania. (...) I have negotiations and discussions with the officials of Google, and Meta, and Microsoft, and IBM, and with many large technology companies, both in the context of their investments in Romania, and in the context of the complicated period we are going through, from to the threats that come from artificial intelligence software to deepfakes. And I don't hide from you the fact that even yesterday we had discussions with officials from the big technology companies through which we try to make sure that Romania will not be the target of massive waves of deepfakes in the coming period". Asked what will happen if fake videos of election candidates appear online, the Minister of Research, Digitization and Innovation replied: "Now I am working on a mechanism together with the big technology platforms that are the basis for distributing such themes as content, and at the moment when we have a general agreement with them, I can tell you that we are working on two more normative acts, namely the Digital Service Act, which is a regulation at the European level and for which we submitted it in December , we passed it through the government and forwarded it to the Parliament to be adopted in the shortest possible time. And at the same time we have a legislative initiative from July 2023, which is currently in the Chamber of Deputies, the Deep Fake law, by which those persons or entities that generate such content using AI tools and that do not specify very clearly that that content is not created in a real form, that is, it is not created with the consent of the person who appears there, they must either display this, or that it is a pamphlet, if not, they will face the rigors of the law. And the rigors of the law range from a fine up to 200,000 lei or even prison, in more complex situations".

• Five billion people have accounts on social networks

The number of active users on social networks exceeded the threshold of five billion people in 2023, i.e. 62.3% of the world population. In 2023, the number of active users on social networks increased by 5.6% compared to 2022, while the world population registered an increase of 0.9%, states a report prepared by the agency We are social and the company Meltwater. based on the estimates made by Kepios, a company specialized in the analysis of the digital sector. Comparatively, worldwide there are 5.35 billion people who have an Internet connection. The most important social network, according to the number of users, is Instagram (part of the Meta group) with a total of 1.65 billion users, closely followed by TikTok (1.56 billion users). The authors of the report acknowledged, however, that there is some lack of precision with regard to automated accounts or with regard to people who opened accounts under different identities. As proof of the curiosity generated by artificial intelligence, the most consulted Wikipedia page in 2023, in all languages combined, is that of ChatGPT, the best-known generative artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.

• EU users will be able to disconnect their accounts from each other

US-based tech giant Meta has announced that users in the European Union will soon be able to disconnect their Instagram and Facebook accounts from each other, as well as other Meta services. This will happen in anticipation of the EU bloc's new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will come into force in March. The changes will allow users in the EU, the European Economic Area and Switzerland to use many of Meta's services without having their data shared between different platforms. For example, users will be able to use Facebook Messenger as a standalone service without a Facebook account. Those who previously connected their Facebook and Instagram accounts will have the option to disconnect them. Also, Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming users will be able to access these services without the information from their primary Facebook accounts being accessible. However, Meta pointed out that this option would lead to reduced functionality. The company said that "over the next few weeks" it will begin sending notifications to users in the region where the law applies, offering the option to disconnect services between them. This includes the ability to prevent Meta from combining Facebook and Instagram usage data.

The DMA applies to six major technology companies, primarily in the United States, including Meta. These companies are designated as "gatekeepers". In addition to controlling how gatekeepers can share data between services, the DMA includes a wide range of regulations aimed at increasing competition and creating a level playing field for companies that depend on gatekeepers to provide their services. Other significant changes expected in the EU resulting from the DMA include making messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger interoperable with competitors and forcing Apple to allow developers to distribute their iOS apps outside of the Apple Store.

• Meta has blocked teenagers' access to sensitive topics

Meta decided to hide from teenagers posts that address topics that may give them dangerous ideas. Meta announces that posts related to certain sensitive topics, such as self-flagellation, graphic violence, eating disorders and others, will no longer be visible in teenagers' newsfeeds. Posts that fall into categories of this kind will simply be hidden from the little ones in order not to expose them to dangerous ideas. The company says that before taking the measure, it consulted with experts in teen development to decide what types of content should be blocked. Additionally, teens who already use Instagram or Facebook will be automatically switched to the most restrictive set of settings available for the two networks. These settings will block a number of features. Among other things, teenagers will only be able to be contacted by the users they follow, and disturbing comments will be automatically hidden. These are some of the strictest measures Meta has ever taken to protect teenagers and come amid several lawsuits accusing the company of specifically targeting children under 13 and not being transparent about how it manages their accounts.