MAGA-aligned U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) accused the U.S. corporation Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads, for “spending nearly $20 million during in the first nine months of this year trying to kill bills like my Kids Online Safety Act.”
Note: When Blackburn introduced the Kids Online Safety Act to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in May, she said: “When our children are online, they are the product of these Big Tech companies and these social media sites. The way these companies view our kids is that they are a profit center. Even Meta has assigned a dollar value to each child.”
She added, “You think, how incredibly callous can a company be? But they are fine with that. Think about that. Our kids are their product. Our kids are their profit center. Meta sees a kid, and they see $247 in profit. That is what they see.”
As seen below in a video posted this week, Blackburn complained to a Meta executive that the company has “an army of 87 lobbyists — that’s one for every six Members of Congress” fighting against regulation.
She yelled at the executive, “You are killing kids, and we know it…I am so sick of what you all are doing. You should be ashamed for putting kids at risk…Money hungry, that’s what you all are.”
Meta spent nearly $20M in the first nine months of this year trying to kill bills like my Kids Online Safety Act. They have an army of 87 lobbyists – that’s one for every six Members of Congress.
They can keep fighting us tooth and nail, but we won’t let them off the hook. pic.twitter.com/KCeSIKybcO
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 29, 2025
Note: In September, the Trump administration welcomed a pledge of at least $600 billion in investments in the U.S. by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who attended a White House dinner for tech leaders, and later made a donation of an undisclosed amount to the building of the President’s new ballroom at the White House, which is estimated to cost $300 million. Other Big Tech companies who have donated to the project include Google, Apple, Microsoft, among others.
Note: Blackburn introduced the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act with co-sponsor Sens. John Thune (R-SD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who last week wrote a letter to the donors of Trump’s White House ballroom project inquiring about the amount of their donations and any potential agreements reached in exchange for their contributions.