Big Tech to Be Grilled by Congress: ‘Big Tobacco Moment?’

This summer, Big Tech titans will be put in the hot seat on Capitol Hill.

On Friday, Axios reported that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has invited the CEOs of Meta, Alphabet, TikTok, and Snap for a June oversight hearing.

The CEOs in question are Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, and Snap’s Evan Spiegel.

The June 23 hearing will be called “Examining Tech Industry Practices and the Implications for Users and Families: Is This Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment?” per a committee spokesperson.

The hearing will be the first of its kind since 2024, when the committee grilled the CEOs of X, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord on children’s online safety.

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The committee’s current ranking member, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is a critic of Big Tech and chaired the committee at the time of the 2024 hearing.

Durbin has called for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online service providers and social media companies from being sued for what their users post. 

The Democrat is also a critic of the rapid increase in data center construction, which he claims has led to a rise in energy costs.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., are also on the committee and co-authored the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill to regulate social media that passed the Senate in 2024 but did not get a vote on the House floor.

Blackburn said in a statement on X of the upcoming hearing, “If these CEOs do not accept this invitation, we must force Big Tech’s hand. They’ve testified in courtrooms, and now they need to testify before Congress. The tide is turning, and accountability is coming.”

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