Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) escalated her campaign against online child exploitation this week, sending a blistering letter to the parent company of messaging app Kik. The letter, released Friday and obtained by The Hill, accuses the platform of deliberately ignoring or enabling the abuse of minors.
Blackburn's move follows a report from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) that labeled Kik a “predator’s paradise.” The report, published last week, found that within 12 seconds of creating an account posing as a 12-year-old, researchers were flooded with sexually explicit messages from strangers. The senator slammed Kik’s policies as designed to permit such predatory behavior.
“The results of this investigation, while disturbing, are not shocking,” Blackburn wrote to Michael Heyward, CEO of MediaLab, Kik’s parent company. “Kik’s policies are designed to allow this kind of predatory behavior.”
Kik has faced repeated scrutiny over child safety, landing on NCOSE’s “Dirty Dozen List” in recent years. The company claims it is an 18-plus platform and has made safety changes, but the NCOSE report argues that without age verification or effective content filters, the app remains a haven for predators. Blackburn echoed that criticism, noting that Kik’s lack of parental controls and age checks leaves children vulnerable.
“Kik purports to be an 18+ platform, meaning it feels no need to implement parental controls — and it lacks age verification,” Blackburn wrote. “Children are being abused on your platform and it appears you are doing little to stop it.”
The Tennessee Republican gave MediaLab one week to answer a series of questions about its age verification process, safeguards for stranger conversations, and the reported failure of its explicit-content filters. She also demanded data on how many reports Kik has received in the past five years about adults initiating sexual conversations with suspected minors, and how many reports the company has sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline.
Blackburn, who is also running for governor of Tennessee, has been one of the Senate’s most vocal advocates for child online safety. She co-sponsored the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), which passed the Senate in 2024 but stalled in the House. This week, a spokesperson for Blackburn confirmed she is leading negotiations with the White House to finalize a legislative package that would trade federal preemption of state AI regulations for passage of KOSA and the No Fakes Act, which protects artists from AI impersonation. The package is also expected to include age verification requirements, a highly contentious issue among lawmakers and tech companies.
The Hill has reached out to MediaLab for comment on Blackburn’s allegations.
