More from Meta, TikTok, and other tech companies go to Congress: all the news

Citron would like you to know he’s a gamer — “games have always brought us together, and Discord makes that happen today.” He acknowledges that more than 60 percent of active users are between the ages of 13 and 24, so child safety takes on particular relevance here. He’s also trying to distinguish himself from the rest of the “Big Tech” crowd, highlighting Discord’s relatively small size and lack of mega-acquisitions.

Graham is pledging to push through a variety of online regulation bills, including the EARN IT Act that’s been stalled in Congress for several years. He’s putting particular attention on rolling back Section 230, which protects tech companies from liability for third-party content.

Durbin has passed things off to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who’s thanking the families who have brought pictures of their children. Graham and Durbin are mostly hitting the same beats — emphasizing the bipartisan agreement here — but Graham is going a little further, telling Mark Zuckerberg that “you have blood on your hands.” The line got applause from the crowd.

As the room for today’s hearing filled up with members of the public, several rows of advocates stood silently and in unison with images of teens or children. They remained standing for many minutes until the chair banged the gavel.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has just kicked off the event, and now we’re hearing from parents and children who were targeted by child predators on platforms like Facebook.

We’re on Capitol Hill now, awaiting the testimony of the five tech CEOs: X’s Linda Yaccarino, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Discord’s Jason Citron. People have just started to take their seats and settle in for what is likely to be a lengthy event.

At least it will be once X, formerly Twitter, hires 100 employees into its new trust and safety team to moderate its roughly 500M global monthly users.