4 min readUpdated: May 16, 2026 01:46 PM IST<\/p>\n
The CEOs of Meta, Alphabet , TikTok and Snap have been invited back to Capitol Hill to answer questions from US lawmakers about children\u2019s online safety, according to a Senate aide.<\/p>\n
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, invited Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet\u2019s Sundar Pichai, TikTok\u2019s Shou Zi Chew and Snap\u2019s Evan Spiegel, said Hannah Akey, a spokeswoman for Grassley. Grassley invited the CEOs earlier in May, she said, and \u2060announced \u200bit today. The companies are facing mounting criticism in the US over child and teen safety.<\/p>\n
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If the CEOs accept the invitation for a hearing, which was first reported by Axios, it would allow members of the Senate\u2019s Judiciary Committee to press the executives on the topics in a public setting.<\/p>\n
Tennessee\u2019s Marsha Blackburn and Connecticut\u2019s Richard Blumenthal, two committee members, are working \u200bto \u200bpersuade their colleagues to back legislation requiring the companies to take more \u2060responsibility for how their apps affect children and teens.<\/p>\n
The US Congress has so far declined to pass comprehensive legislation regulating social media, prompting states to pass their own laws.<\/p>\n
At least \u200c20 states enacted laws last year on social media use and children, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, an organisation that tracks state bills. Snap, Meta, Alphabet\u2019s Google and TikTok are separately facing thousands of lawsuits in federal and state court in California accusing them of designing addictive platforms that undermine children\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n
Meta and Alphabet\u2019s Google, owner of YouTube, lost the first case to go before a jury in March, resulting in a $6 million verdict. TikTok and Snap settled with the plaintiff ahead of the trial. More \u2060trials are planned for the summer. A \u2060New Mexico jury ordered Meta in March to pay $375 million in civil penalties in a trial over child exploitation and user safety claims.<\/p>\n
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Spokespeople for TikTok \u2060and Alphabet\u2019s Google did not immediately \u200crespond to requests for comment from Reuters about the invitations from Congress. Communications teams \u200bfor Snap and Meta declined to comment. Spiegel, Zuckerberg and Chew last testified \u200cbefore Congress in 2024, when the same Senate committee questioned them about escalating threats of sexual predation on their platforms.<\/p>\n
Pichai has participated in a few congressional hearings, including one in 2021 about \u200cmisinformation. For TikTok\u2019s Chew, this would \u200bbe his first \u200btime testifying \u200bon Capitol Hill since the company\u2019s Chinese owner, ByteDance, finalized a deal to split the US app from its global business. ByteDance has disclosed few details about the deal, \u200band a hearing would allow lawmakers to ask questions about President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s role \u2060in brokering the split and Chinese involvement in the US app.<\/p>\n The American-owned joint venture was established to avoid a US ban on the social media app. The US enacted a law in 2024 requiring ByteDance to sell the app \u200cor see it \u2060shut in the country.<\/p>\n Concerns about whether the Chinese government could access Americans\u2019 data or surveil them with the app prompted Congress to pass the law. TikTok at the \u200btime said it had not shared US user data with the Chinese government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4 min readUpdated: May 16, 2026 01:46 PM IST The CEOs of Meta, Alphabet , TikTok and Snap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[153],"tags":[7219,42170,40269,39438,33296,812,618,994,2360,38730,23672,42169,24095,608,1341],"class_list":["post-73623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sundar-pichai","tag-bytedance","tag-capitol-hill-hearing","tag-child-safety-online","tag-children-online-safety","tag-evan-spiegel","tag-google","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-senate-judiciary-committee","tag-shou-zi-chew","tag-snap","tag-social-media-lawsuits","tag-social-media-regulation","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-tiktok"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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