The NPR Politics Podcast - How Safe Are Kids Online? Senators Ask TikTok, Snapchat, And YouTube

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

TikTok and Snapchat appeared for the first time before Congress alongside YouTube to answer questions about how safe their platforms are for young people. Senators are calling for regulations, the company representatives agreed, but dodged any real commitments.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, political reporter Miles Parks, and tech reporter Bobby Allyn.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Alicia Prieto in Youngstown, Ohio. I just came back home from acing my citizenship exam. This podcast was recorded at... It is 2.07 p.m. on Tuesday, October 26, 2021. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will probably still be impatiently waiting for information for my naturalization ceremony. Enjoy the show! Aw, congratulations. That's impressive. I don't know if I could pass it, honestly. I feel like every time I come across one of those questions from one of those,

I'm like, ugh, that's actually tougher than people realize. Yes, very tough. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Myles Parks and I cover voting and misinformation. And we've got NPR's tech correspondent, Bobby Allen, with us. Hi, Bobby. Hello. So you are here because there was a hearing today and it involved these platforms, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, these social media platforms testified before the Senate about, you know, how well they say that they protect kids online.

Bobby, what did the senators want to hear from these platforms? And did they get the information they were looking for? So I think the point of this hearing was really to drag, you know, top lobbyists from YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok before them to try to drill into them in the same way that Facebook and Twitter have been drilled into in the past, which is to say, we know your platforms are incredibly popular, especially with young people, your platforms are very popular. And what are you doing to curb harmful content and to keep your platforms as safe as they can be? And I mean, there's a whole variety of different issues about how the platforms are abused

and how the incentives that these platforms have can sometimes drive young people to do dangerous things or to serve up age-inappropriate content. So I think we heard a lot of answers that they were sort of like dodging around the core question. But what I think this whole hearing really did illustrate is that, you know, Congress is not just interested in giving Facebook a hard time. I mean, they're looking at social media across the board, and that also means Snapchat and TikTok. So I think this really hammered home to them that, you know, they're not going to be able to avoid congressional scrutiny. And Miles, we talked yesterday about the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen.

She, in her testimony earlier this month, highlighted the impact of Facebook and Instagram on young women in particular. But it seems like there is a lot of talk and scrutiny right now on these companies. But is there anything that's really changing or coming out of this scrutiny? I think that's the funny thing, right? We have this weird juxtaposition where I think it's fair to say that lawmakers are more in the know now about how these technologies work than they ever have been. And I would say they're more angry about how these technologies work than they ever have been. And people more broadly, when they respond to polls, generally almost all of them say social media is worse for the world than better for the world. And yet at the same time, when we look at data on how much people are using them, people

are using these technologies more than they ever have been before. A report I was looking at yesterday from the parental control company Custodio found that use in 2020 of screen time broadly was up 36% from the year prior. We saw a Facebook earnings call come out yesterday that found the company is largely really, really financially successful. And so we're seeing a lot of anger, but we're still seeing TikTok having a billion users. So Bobby, Facebook and Twitter have testified dozens of times before Congress. But this was the first time for both Snapchat and TikTok. It seems like are the companies, are they more pointing at Facebook and saying, because Facebook is kind of going through the wringer right now and saying, look at them. We're not quite like Facebook, even though they are kind of like Facebook or have a lot of the same issues.

Yeah, I think, you know, Senator Blumenthal made the point several times in the hearing that, you know, being different from Facebook is not a defense. I understand from your testimony that your defense is we're not Facebook. We're different and we're different from each other. Being different from Facebook is not a defense. That bar is in the gutter. It's not a defense to say that you are different. I think the platforms are all enjoying pointing out the ways in which they aren't Facebook because they know that Facebook is really in the congressional vice grip right now and is dealing with a lot of other legal challenges that are threatening some of the core ways that it

makes money, right? But I mean, look, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, they all are optimized for engagement. I mean, critics would say there are design flaws with the ways in which these social media companies operate that encourage people to see content that is violent, that is misleading, that is full of disinformation. And yeah, there are ways in which Facebook is different than Snapchat and TikTok. But at core, they are social media companies that have the same exact profit-seeking incentive, and that is to keep people as engaged as possible. And that often leads to just some really problematic content. We kind of talked about this a bit yesterday, but what can be done, especially because like Snapchat, 90% of 13 to 24-year-olds use Snapchat according to Snapchat. That's a lot of young people. Like I said, I know my kids want to be on TikTok. They are not on TikTok yet, but they like to try to get online and pretend and tell people to subscribe that button because they're so used to like YouTube.

But like what can be done to actually protect kids and protect young people who are on these platforms? I mean, the platform said during this hearing that they have their own ways to basically safeguard teens and other young people. I mean, TikTok, for instance, has all sorts of parental controls and they have tools that encourage users to take a break. You know, YouTube has similar sort of safeguards in place. But, you know, besides the platforms policing themselves, which I think history has shown they're not fully capable of doing, you know, there's all sorts of regulatory proposals, whether it's taking a look at the algorithms.

Does the algorithm need to be overseen by government? I mean, there's a lot of academics who study social media who says that is potentially a really thorny and scary prospect, because, you know, as the political winds change, maybe the way that they see algorithms will change. And that just, you know, that that really does distress a lot of people who study social media. Should these companies be forced to beef up their content moderation team so there's more people watching what's being posted and they could take stuff down? Or is there some other kind of government oversight? And, you know, time will tell what ends up happening. But I think there is bipartisan energy right now for more to be done

because, you know, these companies thrived in Silicon Valley because there are virtually no regulations and there haven't been for decades. And obviously, that is about to change. It kind of comes down to transparency to me. I mean, transparency for parents in terms of can parents have a better understanding of, you know, what their kids are being fed when they give them these apps and transparency on how much the companies know about their products' effects on kids. You know, we've seen the last couple years, Facebook kind of evade the question of how much they knew about how Instagram and Facebook were affecting kids.

And then in the leaked documents over the last couple weeks, it's very clear they knew more than they were letting on. And so I think that's going to be a big question going forward, is how much do these other companies know about how their products are affecting children? Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about how these companies collect data on young people. And we're back. Let's talk about TikTok for a minute. The platform is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. And that was a focus of some conservative Republican lawmakers who talked about the company and its data collection. And this was an issue back during the Trump administration, too, about, you know, who owned TikTok. What did the company have to say about that? So the company, under some pretty

fierce and spirited grilling from Ted Cruz, said, look, there is a firewall between TikTok's U.S. operations and China. Mr. Beckerman, I get you may have broader points you want to make. My question is simple and straightforward. Does TikTok consider ByteDance, the parent company headquartered in Beijing, to be part of TikTok's corporate group? That's a yes or no. Senator, access controls for our data is done by our U.S. teams. Yeah, TikTok's corporate parent company is based in Beijing. And that's part of the basis for, you know, the Trump administration's failed attempt to put TikTok out of business. And look, they're not just Republican concerns.

There are white person concerns about TikTok's ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party. But under grilling from, you know, Senator Cruz and others, Michael Beckerman, who's a top lobbyist for TikTok, said that the company doesn't share information with the Chinese government, never has, never will. And that will raise the question, well, is that true? And I think it is true. As far as we know, we have no proof that TikTok has ever given any information to the Chinese government. So if you're a parent out there and you're listening and you're wondering if you should be concerned about the Chinese government getting access to your kids' TikToks, it's probably not a concern yet. That said,

it's theoretically possible. And just to be clear, what is the main concern about them having the data, like China could have the data and then, you know, look at how your kids dance and do great wild things? things. I'm certain, certainly, it would be more than that, right? Like just their identifying information. Yeah, I mean, I think the concern is around and Senator Cruz even said this during the hearing is Chinese propaganda and espionage, right? That basically Chinese authorities and again, this is very theoretical, there's no proof that this has ever happened, but that Chinese authorities could build dossiers against Americans and use that to blackmail them. And that China can build, you know, sort of data profiles of teenagers. And what would they do with that? I don't know. I don't

even want to speculate because them doing it at all is just sheer speculation. But, you know, we do know because the Chinese government has such close ties to private business in the country that, you know, when I've talked to security experts who are in China and study China, they say this is something that we should still be thinking about. Miles, what kind of regulations are lawmakers suggesting during this hearing? And does it look like any actual regulations are any closer to fruition? I mean, I heard kind of everything under the sun. I think we heard a lot of mention of Section 230, this idea that, you know, how much liability should these platforms have for the content that users post. Currently, they have very, very, very little liability. And some lawmakers would argue that that liability should fall more on these

platforms. I will say the executives from the companies were really effective at saying they supported the goals of most of the legislation that all of the senators proposed, but they mostly tiptoed around the idea of actually committing to supporting the legislation itself. And that's something that really seemed to frustrate Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. This is the talk that we've seen again and again and again and again. We support the goals, but that's meaningless unless you support the legislation. I mean, the companies love saying that they support modernizing Section 230 and they support government regulation. But look, when you actually apply some real pressure to what they're advocating for, it's for status quo.

I mean, these companies do not want to be regulated in a way that's going to make them completely upend their business models and how they operate. And I think they are sort of trying to front run regulations by saying, hey, we're embracing them. We actually want them. Please update Section 230. It's because their lobbyists are furiously working with lawmakers trying to write regulations that would be advantageous to these companies. All right. Well, you know, whenever lobbyists are asking for laws or regulations, there's usually some type of hitch, you know, with that. So thank you so much, Bobby Allen, NPR's tech correspondent. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting and misinformation. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.