Meta & Children's Online SafetyBack to this hearing · All hearings
Published hearing exchange
Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis
Questioner: Ted CruzWitness: Mark Zuckerberg
Narrative: KnowledgeHarm: Child sexual exploitationDesign feature: Content AlgorithmDesign feature: Hashtags
Q. · Question
Ted Cruz
A. · Response
Mark Zuckerberg
QuestionCites a WSJ investigation finding Instagram's own recommendation algorithm actively surfaced CSAM-selling accounts via graphic hashtags, and that Instagram's warning screen for such searches offered a "see results anyway" option — asks how that choice could ever have been made.
ResponseZuckerberg defends the "see results anyway" option as a safeguard against false positives, without addressing the specific hashtag-promotion allegation from the WSJ report.