On Tuesday the Senate heard testimonies from Big Tech executives, in the wake of the Facebook whistleblower’s testimony two weeks ago. A Senate panel interrogated executives from YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat… and one senator went especially hard on Snapchat.
Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, grilled Snapchat’s Jennifer Stout the company’s vice president for global public policy and a former deputy chief of staff to environment czar John Kerry.
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According to Lee’s testimony, his staff made a Snapchat account for a teenager and then became bombarded with lewd advertisements.
Lee began this interrogation by asking Stout about the age guidelines on Snapchat. Stout assured him, “Senator, the content that appears on Snapchat is appropriate for an age group of 13 and above.”
Lee wasn’t satisfied. He fired back:
Let’s talk about that for a minute, because I beg to differ.
In anticipation of this discussion and this hearing, I had my staff create a Snapchat account for a 13-year-old, for a 15 year old child. Now, they didn’t select any content preferences for the account. They simply entered a name, a birth year, and an email address.
And then, when they opened the Discover page on Snapchat with its default settings, they were immediately bombarded with content that I can most politely describe as wildly inappropriate for a child — including recommendations for, among other things, an invite to play an online sexualized video game that’s marketed itself to people who are 18 and up, tips on — quote — “why you shouldn’t go to bars alone,” notices for video games that are rated for ages 17 and up, and articles about porn stars.
Now, let me remind you that this inappropriate content that has by default been recommended for a 15-year-old child is something that was sent to them by an app just using the default settings. So, I respectfully but very strongly beg to differ on your characterization that the content is in fact suitable for children 13 and up, as you say.
Now, according to your own website, Discover is a list of recommended stories. So, how and why does Snapchat choose these inappropriate stories to recommend to children. How does that happen? How would that happen?
Ouch!
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Stout took notes and then explained Snapchat’s age guidelines.
“I am unclear why that content would have shown up in an account that was for a 14-year-old, but these community guidelines and publisher guidelines that are on top of those guidelines are intended to be an age-appropriate experience for a 13-year old,” she said. “Senator, these additional guidelines on top of community guidelines are things that suggest they may not glorify violence, that any news articles must be accurate and fact-checked.”
Lee accused Snapchat of ignoring the issue at hand.
“Well, I’m sure the articles about the porn stars were accurate and fact-checked,” he said. “I’m sure that the tips on why you shouldn’t go to bars alone are accurate and fact-checked, but that’s not my question. This is about whether it’s appropriate for children ages 13 and up, as you’ve certified.”
Stout responded by discussing Snapchat’s difficulties with content moderation. “This is an area where we’re constantly evolving,” she said. “We use a variety of human review as well as automated review, and so I would very much be interested in talking to you and your staff about what kind of content this was, because, if it violates our guidelines, that kind of content would come down.”
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She also claimed that Snapchat’s Discover page refuses to promote harmful, illegal content.
After that, Lee ran out of time and pivoted to a question about selling demographic data to digital advertisers.
The Horn editorial team