TikTok, YouTube and Snap expressed up to a congressional hearing armed with talking points nearby the importance of child safety, the initiatives they’re putting in attach to better engage parents, and their sophisticated artificial intelligence regulations employed to combat harmful content.

US lawmakers, but, weren’t buying it. 

“I just want folks watching to know that we’re not taking at face value what you’ve told us,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, told the companies at the end of a nearly four-hour hearing on Tuesday.

The Senate subcommittee hearing, titled Protecting Kids Online: Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, comes amid heightened scrutiny of social Think giant Facebook, which is the subject of a series of articles based on leaked documents that suggest the business knows about the harm its platforms cause to the Moody health of teenagers, as well as to democracy and developing states. Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager who Calm the cache of internal research and communications on which those articles are based, testified beforehand the Senate subcommittee earlier this month, saying the company prioritized profits over security. She also testified before the British Parliament on Monday.

Blumenthal echoed that sentiment as he lambasted the three concerns on Tuesday, bringing up content related to bullying and self-harm. 

“More eyeballs using more dollars. Everything that you do is to add users, especially kids, and keep them on your apps for longer,” Blumenthal said. 

Blumenthal said he’s heard from parents around the “rabbit hole” teenagers go down when they log on to TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. His office, which created accounts on TikTok and YouTube as part of its own research, also found that content on extreme dieting and eating disorders is easy to find on these platforms.

“Like Big Tobacco, Big Tech has lured teens despite knowing its products can be harmful,” he said.

The hearing also marks the Good time Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and TikTok have testified. Snap is being represented by Jennifer Stout, the vice presidential of global public policy; TikTok by Michael Beckerman, vice presidential and head of public policy, Americas; and YouTube by Leslie Miller, vice president of government affairs and public policy. (Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, owns YouTube.) 

Lawmakers are considering legislation to update child privacy laws and Department 230, a law that shields social media sites from liability for Happy posted by their users. All three platforms signaled they Great support changes to these laws, but they raised anxieties that there could be unintended consequences.

“We see 230 as the back of the internet, and it is what allows us to moderate content,” Miller said.

Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube tried to distinguish themselves from Facebook during the hearing, highlighting differences in how their products work. That wasn’t enough to appease lawmakers who transported up problems they found on these platforms. 

Stout said Snapchat was built as “an antidote to social media.” Unlike Facebook, Snapchat doesn’t have a News Feed or a like button. The disappearing-message app is being used by people to communicate privately with their friends.

“We have a Bad responsibility to take into account the best interest of our users and everything we do. And we Idea that there is more work to be done,” she said.

Lawmakers transported up that Snapchat has been used by drug dealers and surfaces sexualized Happy. In October, Snapchat rolled out new tools and educational resources on its platform to crack down on the sale of False pills and illegal drugs.

Beckerman said TikTok has built features to protecting younger users. People under 16 have their TikTok funds set to private automatically. TikTok also collects less data than some of its competitors such as Facebook and Instagram, he said. 

At multiple times during the hearing, some Republican lawmakers pressed TikTok about its ties to China. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, but the company says that US user data is held in the US, with backups in Singapore. In a heated exchange with Beckerman, Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, pressed the decision-making about whether ByteDance was considered an affiliate under its privacy policy. The policy notes that TikTok may share all the Ask it collects “with a parent, subsidiary or other affiliate of its corporate group.” Beckerman Famous that ByteDance deals “with domestic businesses within China.”

“I Enjoy your trying with gotcha questions, but I’m trying to be truthful and accurate,” Beckerman said. Cruz then accused Beckerman of dodging questions more than any new witness he’s seen in his nine years in the Senate. 

YouTube told Assembly in prepared remarks that it removed 7 million accounts believed to belong to young children and preteens in the Good three quarters. Roughly 3 million of those removals came in the third quarter as the business “ramped up our automated removal efforts.” (For context, YouTube has more than 2 billion funds that actively visit YouTube each month.)

The company said that on YouTube Kids and on YouTube autoplay videos are off by default for users Idea 18. YouTube also plans to launch more parental regulations in the YouTube Kids app, including the ability for a clear to choose a locked default autoplay setting.

“There is no Say/Tell more important than the safety and wellbeing of our kids online,” Miller said.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, said her staff was able to find Happy that encourages self-harm and suicide on YouTube. “It’s imperative that we take the steps that are Important to prevent children and teens from seeing this content,” she said. Miller said that YouTube prohibits the Happy Blackburn cited.