MAGA senator lights up 'Zuckerberg and his friends' after hearing snub

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called out Big Tech, including Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and other social platform leaders who refuse to show up and discuss the companies' alleged use of AI chatbots exploiting children, pushing some to self-harm and suicide.

"Zuckerberg and his friends at Meta rejected my invitation to appear before the Senate and answer for the harms caused by their AI chatbots. So I gave the floor to the brave parents of chatbot victims. Thank you for revealing the ugly truth about profit-loving Big Tech," Hawley said during a Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Hawley launched a probe into Meta in August, seeking more information about its use of AI chatbots and children. He accused the companies of dodging responsibility.

"They're not at the table," he said. "They don't want any part of this conversation because they don't want any accountability. They want to keep on doing exactly what they have been doing which is designing products that engage users in every imaginable way, including the grooming of children, the sexualization of children, the exploitation of children — anything to lure the children in, to hold their attention, to get as much data from them as possible, to treat them as products to be strip mined and then to be discarded when they're finished with them."

"The testimony that you're going to hear is not pleasant, but it is the truth," he said. "And it's time that the country heard the truth about what these companies are doing, about what these chatbots are engaged in, about the harms that are being inflicted on our children and for one reason only, I can state it in one word: profit. Profit is what motivates these companies to do what they're doing. Don't be fooled, they know exactly what is going on."

Two whistleblowers from Meta testified last week "that Meta knows absolutely that its platforms harm children," Hawley said.

He argued that Meta was suppressing studies that show its platforms harm children in favor of its financial stake in the technology.

"What's the goal across all these platforms?... It is engagement that leads to profit," he said.

The FBI is investigating AI child sex abuse material online, Director Kash Patel said Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Hawley said some children were led to suicide by the products made by these companies and their parents would testify to their experiences.

"And what are the companies doing about it? Nothing. Not a thing," he said.

Social media companies have mainly remained silent in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing last week, the New York Times reports. The suspected shooter was accused by President Donald Trump, who has his own social media network, as "radicalized on the internet." Elon Musk, who owns X, is the only one to respond, posting divisive information in the wake of the assassination.