Ashley Moody Discusses Online Threats To Children And What Lawmakers Can Do To Stop Them

Well, these are products so strict liability should should apply here if if these companies have have created a defective product Then all users should be able to sue them without having to prove even prove a duty if the if the product injured them Thank you. Thank you Appreciate you being here today. I Have been so impressed with this Committee I'm a senator all of four weeks. So get ready. I Bring to it with a an array of passions I have acquired not just as an attorney general, but as a mother of a teenager right now And I'm so impressed with the topics that we have focused on and specifically this one It was shocking to me that the Senate was able to move forward pretty Unanimously on some protections for children and they ran right into the house that did not go along with some of those things and I'm hoping That we can change that As attorney general, obviously I fought in court Against many of the platforms. I investigated platforms for harms to children. I am the mother dealing with this now In fact, I tell people all the time It is really hard to be one of the first generations of parents trying to parent children And we don't understand what we're doing because we don't understand the technology to the degree they do in fact When I am going through some of the controls I often have to ask my kid what that means which seems to defeat the purpose, but here we are and while I can break down what we're addressing today by privacy concerns of children certainly harm to children whether that is mental affects addiction or Materials that they never would have been exposed to in the past, but they now have ready access to One of the things I want to talk about quickly is the access to our children Predators and bad actors. I think this is this third lane that we read about repeatedly in the paper every single day In my state from doctors to Predators to you name it they are getting access to our children and parents in the past could lock our children's bedroom doors and know They were safe at night, but that is not the reality anymore In fact in my own child school, there were five teenage boys a woman was arrested for Proposing as one and luring them and molesting them online I think using snapchat and tick-tock and of course when you engage with the platforms They will often deny that this is happening But it is happening and the best people that can represent that are the parents where it's happening To their children in their homes while they thought they were safe. And so I I really commend you as a fellow parent Mr. Guffey for taking your pain Channeling that into just frustration and anger because that is what is going to get the attention of lawmakers We've tried to get the attention of the platforms We've talked a lot about what needs to be done to force some restrictions and them acting on their own But we need to talk about what needs to be done Through laws and what I'm specifically concerned about and I would open this up to whoever wants to answer this question What is the thing that we can do as lawmakers right now? To stop predators from getting access to our children. I Can go okay I want to use this as an example because the comment was made that We as we essentially have different laws for the outside world than we do from the inside world if I had a storage facility and I stored only guns in there and you as Attorney General and and Someone was breaking the law and I said, okay Well, the majority are law-abiding citizens, but we also have terrorists and we're gonna store guns for criminals And if I told you that you had to have the digital ID to get into that locker You think that's ludicrous, but that's exactly what the way that we treat CSAM I mean to me, I believe that if you're housing CSAM, you should be held responsible But nothing is going to change until we open up civil liability These are the world's richest companies since the inception of man and yet they are immune and I'd say that if you have designed a product where you are exposing children to predators and you can't stop that from happening then it's a defective product and all a parent or a victim should have to do to be able to sue you is just to show that you know about the problem and the extent of it and in your experience and I have Understand that this has happened When parents have demanded and shown that this harmful materials online and demanded that they take it down They've now told them about it. They know about it and there have been refusals to take it down absolutely, and those cases get thrown out of court because the the Online platform says well, I didn't know about that specific incident, you know Of course, they're not gonna know about that specific incident or they're gonna say I didn't intend to harm that exact child Mr. Preserve, I know you have law enforcement experience and I'm grateful for that. Thank you. My husband has career law enforcement Understanding that predators can now get to our children through online platforms and online What is the number one thing you would recommend to prevent that that we can do as Congress device a device based age verification? you mentioned parental controls if there was a framework for a parent just to shut the spigot off and Make it easy rather than go through 25 different apps. The companies have this we can stop it at the device level That's where we prevent children from getting on some of these images and offenders getting access to those children Thank you. And since I am the acting chair, I don't want to Exceed the boundaries of time So I will turn it over to Senator Whitehouse Thank you And I understand that I've been given permission to close out the hearing at the end of my question