Month: June 2023

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released the following statement after Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, and SeatGeek announced they will begin showing consumers the full price of tickets and fees up front:

“Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s announcement is a step in the right direction, but no substitute for legislation to provide consumers with transparency and prevent companies from imposing ridiculous junk fees. Rather than a voluntary patchwork varying by company, Americans deserve a basic disclosure standard so they can be fully aware of the prices and fees they’re being charged. The days of padding corporate profits by nickel and diming consumers are numbered. We need the Junk Fee Prevention Act to address the price gouging and hidden costs – not just for concerts and sporting events, but for airlines, hotels, and other services.”  

In March, Blumenthal introduced the Junk Fee Prevention Act to eliminate excessive, hidden, and unnecessary fees imposed on consumers and require full prices of services be provided upfront ensuring transparency in the ticketing, hotel, and entertainment industries. Blumenthal is also the lead Senate co-sponsor of the BOSS Act, which would provide transparency and regulation to the primary and second live events ticket marketplace.

“Meta’s own failures have made Instagram a safe haven for child abuse,” the senators wrote following The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the platform’s hosting of a “vast pedophile network” [WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Following reporting by The Wall Street Journal about Instagram hosting and connecting a vast network of pedophiles and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), authors of the Kids Online Safety Act, demanded Meta answer for its failures to protect children on its platforms and efforts to stop and report the heinous crimes. The investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Recue Lab found hundreds of accounts on the platform were able to openly sell and trade CSAM, including abuse content, illicit sexual acts, and trafficked children. The researchers also found the platform’s algorithms contributed to this problem, flooding users with other child abuse communities. “Instagram was not merely acting as a passive host for predators, but was found to be fostering abuse networks,” Blumenthal and Blackburn wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Essentially, Instagram was caught brokering child abuse material and helping child predators network together.” The senators said Meta failed to remove illicit hashtags and accounts associated with the pedophile network, which remained on Instagram even after the Journal’s reporting. The letter also documents Meta’s continued rejection of reports of child abuse, confirming the experience of parents and advocates who reported explicit images involving children but were left unanswered for months. “Meta’s inaction has profound real life consequences for children,” the senators wrote. “These reports reflect a dangerous and recurring pattern of Meta failing to catch vile and exploitative material targeting children, despite repeated assurances to Congress and the public that it is cleaning up its platforms.” While Meta has set up an internal task force to address these shortcomings and threats to children, Blumenthal and Blackburn called the response, “anemic” and said the investigation’s findings, “should trouble every young person and parent in America.” Blumenthal and Blackburn also noted that because of Meta’s weak enforcement and poor safeguards, the proliferation of CSAM, sextortion, and other threats to children are worse on Instagram than on other social media platforms. Citing their work on the Kids Online Safety Act, the EARN IT Act, and the REPORT Act, the senators demanded Meta, “provide information regarding the prevalence of child sexual exploitation and the measures it takes to address child safety on Instagram and other platforms it operates.”