On November 20, US senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham said that they had issued subpoenas to the Chief Executive Officers of X, Discord, and Snap to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation on December 6. According to the senators' statement, the three companies repeatedly refused to appear before the committee during several weeks of negotiations. Further, despite the committee's order to appear, Discord and X refused to accept the subpoenas on behalf of their CEOs in response to which the committee had to enlist the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service to personally serve the subpoenas. Besides X, Discord, and Snap, the committee is also in discussion with Meta and TikTok and expects their CEOs to agree to testify voluntarily. Platforms under the global regulatory lens for child safety concerns: The US isn't the only country digging into child safety issues on social media platforms; other countries are also actively looking into how social media giants like X, Discord, and Snap seek to protect their younger audience. Just last month, Australia's online safety regulator eSafety Commissioner fined X $385,000 for its failure to address questions about how it tackled child sexual exploitation content present on its platform. It also highlighted that Discord is not making attempts to detect child sexual exploitation in live streams and is also not using any technology to detect grooming (actions or behaviors used to establish an emotional connection with a minor). Similarly, the UK's Information and Communication Officer (ICO)…
