I'm Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snap.
We created Snapchat, an online service that is used by more than 800 million people worldwide to communicate with their friends and family.
I know that many of you have been working to protect children online since before Snapchat was created, and we are grateful for your long-term dedication to this cause and your willingness to work together to help keep our community safe.
I want to acknowledge the survivors of online harms and the families who are here today who have suffered the loss of a loved one.
Words cannot begin to express the profound sorrow I feel that a service we designed to bring people happiness and joy has been abused to cause harm.
I want to be clear that we understand our responsibility to keep our community safe.
I also want to recognize the many families who have worked to raise awareness on these issues, push for change, and collaborate with lawmakers on important legislation like the Cooper Davis Act, which can help save lives.
I started building Snapchat with my co-founder, Bobby Murphy, when I was 20 years old.
We designed Snapchat to solve some of the problems that we experienced online when we were teenagers.
We didn't have an alternative to social media.
