Instagram Executive Faces Senate Hearing on Safety

“After bombshell reports about Instagram’s toxic impacts, we want to hear straight from the company’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms that push poisonous content to children driving them down rabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), chairman of the subcommittee, in a statement.

State attorneys general are investigating how Instagram attracts and affects young people, looking for potential violations of consumer-protection laws. Those types of cases often examine the accuracy of a company’s public statements, including at congressional hearings.

Mr. Mosseri was expected to emphasize the steps Instagram is already taking to protect children on the platform, according to a spokesman for the parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., FB 1.55% which also owns Facebook.

Before the hearing, Instagram said it would implement new tools to protect teens who use the app. They include prompts to suggest users take breaks, controls for parents to curtail their children’s usage, limits on tagging or mentioning teen users, and the ability for users to bulk-delete their own photos, videos and other content.

Those measures, however, might not go far enough to satisfy lawmakers. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) said Tuesday the new Instagram tools were an attempt to shift attention from their mistakes.

“Instagram’s repeated failures to protect children’s privacy have already been exposed before the U.S. Senate,” said Ms. Blackburn, the subcommittee’s top Republican. “Now, it is time for action. I look forward to discussing tangible solutions to improve safety and data security for our children and grandchildren.”

Some lawmakers, including Ms. Blackburn, want Instagram to abandon plans to roll out a version tailored to children, similar to YouTube Kids and other products. Mr. Mosseri announced a pause on those plans in September, but said he still believed in the idea as a way to protect pre-teens who today might use the app despite its minimum required age of 13.

Senators said they are working on legislation to address issues raised at the hearings, but so far talks haven’t yielded proposals with broad momentum.

Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), who helped author a children’s privacy law in the late 1990s, has been meeting recently with Republican senators, including Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the senior GOP member of the Senate Commerce Committee, to discuss a ban on targeted ads directed at children, among other topics, an aide to Sen. Markey said.

On Thursday, a separate Senate subcommittee on communications policy is scheduled to hold a hearing on legislative solutions for “dangerous algorithms” that “manipulate user experiences.”

Wednesday’s hearing of the consumer-protection subcommittee is the latest in a series started in September after the Journal published the Facebook Files. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, appeared before the panel Oct. 5. The company has disputed her characterization of its culture and decision making, saying it works hard to keep consumers safe and many users benefit from its apps.

Lawmakers later questioned executives from ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Snap Inc. ‘s Snapchat and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube about children’s safety online.

Write to Ryan Tracy at [email protected] and John D. McKinnon at [email protected]