When Mark Zuckerberg can face US senators and claim the moral high ground, we’re through the looking glass | Marina Hyde

Tech CEOs who've ruined people's lives or politicians who back misery and mayhem? That's a low bar and a tough choice

Did you catch a clip of the tech CEOs in Washington this week? The Senate judiciary committee had summoned five CEOs to a hearing titled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. There was Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, Snapchat's Evan Spiegel, Discord's Jason Citron and X's Linda Yaccarino - and a predictable vibe of Senator, I'm a parent myself ..." Listen, these moguls simply want to provide the tools to help families and friends connect with each other. Why must human misery and untold, tax-avoidant billions attend them at every turn?

If you did see footage from the hearing, it was probably one of two moments of deliberately clippable news content. Ranking committee member Lindsey Graham addressed Zuckerberg with the words: I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands." Well, ditto, Senator. You have a product that is killing people," continued Graham, who strangely has yet to make the same point to the makers of whichever brand of AR-15 he proudly owns, or indeed to the makers of the assault rifles responsible for another record high of US school shootings last year. Firearms fatalities are the number one cause of death among US children and teenagers, a fact the tech CEOs at this hearing politely declined to mention, because no one likes a whatabouterist. And after all, the point of these things is to just get through the posturing of politicians infinitely less powerful than you, then scoot back to behaving precisely as you were before. Zuckerberg was out of there in time to report bumper results and announce Meta's first ever dividend on Thursday. At time of writing, its shares were soaring.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist