Carly Ryan Foundation to attend US Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing in Washington DC
Date posted:
On Carly's birthday, the 31st of January 2024, Sonya Ryan, Founder & CEO of The Carly Ryan Foundation will be attending a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington DC featuring testimony from the CEOs of social media companies Discord, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter)—a consensus panel agreed to by Chair Durbin and Ranking Member Graham
The companies range in size, products offered, demographics served, and approaches to address child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse material.
Durbin and the Committee have extensively examined and investigated the plague of online child sexual exploitation, through hearings, legislation, and oversight efforts. This hearing will build on that work and highlight the need for Congress to act on the bipartisan bills reported by the Committee.
Bottom line: Social media companies have failed to police themselves at our kids' expense, and now Congress must act!
Since the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on kids' online safety in February 2023, the Committee has unanimously reported multiple bipartisan bills to help stop the exploitation of kids online, including:
- The STOP CSAM Act, which supports victims and increases accountability and transparency for online platforms;
- The EARN IT Act, which removes tech's blanket immunity from civil and criminal liability under child sexual abuse material laws and establishes a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention;
- The SHIELD Act, which ensures that federal prosecutors have appropriate and effective tools to address the nonconsensual distribution of sexual imagery;
- The Project Safe Childhood Act, which modernizes the investigation and prosecution of online child exploitation crimes; and,
- The REPORT Act, which combats the rise in online child sexual exploitation by establishing new measures to help strengthen reporting of those crimes to the CyberTipline.
Stay tuned for updates!