Richard Blumenthal, an aide to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, said Wednesday that the head of Instagram is due to testify before Congress next month to answer growing questions about the app’s effects on young users from the Wall Street Journal investigation.
Adam Mosseri, who has run Instagram for a little over three years, is due to appear before the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee during the week of December 6. Mr. Mosseri previously led the News Feed team for Facebook. Both apps are now part of Meta Platforms Inc., a new name for parent Facebook Inc.
The testimony follows an article in the journal’s Facebook Files series in September that showed the company’s internal research found Instagram to be harmful to a large percentage of young users, especially teens with body-image concerns. for girls.
The article prompted lawmakers and others to express concern about the platform’s effects on young people’s mental health. Shortly thereafter, Antigone Davis, Meta’s global security chief, appeared in a controversial three-hour Senate hearing about internal research. During the hearing, she said the company strongly disagrees with the characterization of the journal’s research.
“Following the blustery reports about Instagram’s toxic effects, we’d like to hear directly from the company’s leadership about why it uses powerful algorithms that push toxic content down the rabbit hole to take kids to dark places.” and what it will do to make its platform secure,” Sen. Blumenthal said in a statement on Wednesday.
In a video posted on Twitter on Wednesday, Mr Mosseri said he has three young boys who will eventually grow up to use the Internet. As a result, he said, he was invested in online security. “These are hotly debated topics and are being debated from the halls of Congress to the dining room tables and back now,” he said in the video.
He added: “I’m going to talk about these issues with Congress relatively soon.”
In the wake of the Journal’s report and criticism from Congress, Instagram suspended its plans for a children’s version of the Instagram app so that the company could hear the concerns of parents and government officials more broadly, Mr. Mosseri said at the time. said. The New York Times previously reported that Mr Mosseri had planned to testify.
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