In his letter, Ian Russell argued that “ominous” changes in the tech industry put greater pressure on the government to act.
He said Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X, were “at the leading edge of a wholesale recalibration of the industry”.
He accused Zuckerberg of moving away from safety towards a “laissez-faire, anything-goes model” and “back towards the harmful content that Molly was exposed to”.
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg said Meta would be getting rid of fact checkers, and instead adopt a system – already introduced by X – of allowing users to add “community notes” to social media posts they deemed to be untrue.
This marked a change from Meta’s previous approach, introduced in 2016, whereby third party moderators would check posts on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to be false or misleading.
Content flagged as inaccurate would be moved lower in users’ feeds and accompanied by labels offering viewers more information on the subject.
Defending the new system, Zuckerberg said moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.
The step comes as Meta seeks to improve relations with incoming US President Donald Trump who has previously accused the company of censoring right-wing voices.
Zuckerberg said the change – which only applies in the US – would mean content moderators would “catch less bad stuff” but would also reduce the number of “innocent” posts being removed.
Responding to Russell’s criticism, a Meta spokesperson told the BBC there was “no change to how we treat content that encourages suicide, self-injury, and eating disorders” and said the company would “continue to use our automated systems to scan for that high-severity content”.
Asked about the change, Kyle said the announcement was “an American statement for American service users” adding: “There is one thing that has not changed and that is the law of this land.”
“If you come and operate in this country you abide by the law, and the law says illegal content must be taken down,” he said.
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