Instagram's Adam Mosseri was the latest tech executive
pressed by lawmakers to provide more transparency into their platforms'
algorithms and the impact of the content they curate and recommend for users.
Instagram and its parent company Meta, formerly Facebook,
have come under intense scrutiny over the potential impact of their services on
the mental health, body image and safety of young users, including after
whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents about the company's
approach to younger users.
Speaking before a Senate panel, Mosseri said the
photo-sharing app had been working "for months" on the option of a
feed ordered chronologically and planned to launch it in early 2022, in a
significant change for the service, which uses algorithmic ranking to
personalise a feed based on user preferences.
At the hearing, lawmakers pushed Mosseri for specific
answers on what legislative reforms he would support around kids' online
safety, including on targeted advertising. In his opening remarks, Senator
Richard Blumenthal said the time for self-regulation was over.
In his testimony, Mosseri called for the creation of an
industry body to determine best practices to help keep young people safe online.
The body, he said, should receive input from civil society, parents, and
regulators to create standards on how to verify age, design age-appropriate
experiences, and build parental controls.
Mosseri said tech companies should have to adhere to
standards by this proposed industry body to "earn" some of their
Section 230 protections, referring to a key US Internet law which offers tech
platforms protections from liability over content posted by users.
'Too little, too late'
Instagram, since September, has suspended plans for a
version of the app for kids, amid growing opposition to the project.
The pause followed a Wall Street Journal report that said
internal documents, leaked by former Facebook employee Haugen, showed the
company knew Instagram could have harmful mental health effects on teens.
Mosseri, speaking at the hearing, echoed the company's
previous statements that public reporting mischaracterised the internal
research. He did not commit to making permanent the pause on a kids-focused
version of Instagram.
He also touted product announcements Instagram made on
Tuesday on young users' safety, but Senator Marsha Blackburn called the updates
"too little, too late," while Senator Blumenthal referred to the
changes, including Instagram's pause on its kids app, as a "public
relations tactic."
In a call after the hearing, Blackburn said she would like
to see Instagram offer "today" the option for a purely chronological
news feed while Blumenthal said it could be a "significant step depending
on the details."
Senator Blackburn also said that her team created a fake
Instagram account for a 15-year-old that defaulted to a public account, despite
Instagram's changes to make new accounts for users under 16 private by default.
Mosseri said this loophole had been missed on the web version of the site and
would be corrected.
Instagram, like other social media sites, has rules against
children under 13 joining the platform but has said it knows it has users this
age. In his testimony, Mosseri called for more age verification technology at a
phone level, rather than by individual tech platforms, so users have an
"age-appropriate experience." -Reuters
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