‘Killing people’: South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham leads fiery hearing on Capitol Hill with social media execs

WASHINGTON, D.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — Cheers and applause erupted on Capitol Hill as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham grilled social media executives.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Graham said to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg. “You have a product that is killing people.”

The focus of Wednesday’s hearing was to address growing concerns that social media companies like Meta, TikTok and X aren’t doing enough to protect children from the dark side of the platforms: sexual predators, suicide and sextortion , to name a few.

S.C. State Rep. Brandon Guffey’s son, Gavin, died by suicide in June of 2022 after falling victim to a sextortion scheme on social media. Graham shared the boy’s story with the social media bigwigs.

“They threatened the young man that if you don’t give us money, we’re going to expose these photos,” Graham said. “He gave them money, but it wasn’t enough. They kept threatening and he killed himself. They threatened Mr. Guffey and his son.”

Guffey, a York County lawmaker, has now dedicated his life to making the platforms safer. He was in D.C. for Wednesday’s hearing as Zuckerberg apologized to parents in attendance who held up pictures of their dead children.

“You know, being from Rock Hill, we have a saying that says, ‘Don’t talk about it; be about it,” Guffey said. “And, you know, the talk is cheap. Let’s see what you’re doing.”

He says he was disappointed with Wednesday’s hearing, and the lack of accountability by the social media executives.

Legislators have introduced hundreds of bills aiming to regulate social media companies, but many have met the same fate.

“They go nowhere,” Graham said. “They leave the committee, and they die. Now there’s another approach.”

Some lawmakers would like to reform section 230 of the United States Code. It essentially protects social media companies from being sued since they’re platforms and not content creators. It states, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

“We could regulate you out of business if we wanted to,” said North Carolina’s Sen. Thom Tillis, “and the reason I’m saying may sound like a criticism is not a criticism. I think we have to understand that there should be an inherent motivation for you to get this right.”

Graham and others did acknowledge that the platforms have had a positive impact on peoples’ lives as well. Their hope, however, is to get a law on the books that protects the American consumer.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Queen City News.