Facebook whistleblower - Haugen called ‘21st century hero’ by Senate as Zuckerberg told toxic time is up
Frances Haugen urges government to regulate social media company
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Your support makes all the difference.Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has testified before a Senate hearing, urging the government to regulate the social media company.
In a rare moment of unity seldom seen in Congress, Ms Haugen responded to in-depth questions from lawmakers from both parties concerning the impact of social media on children, concerns about national security, and what her specific recommendations are for reforming the sector.
The testimony adds to Ms Haugen’s interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, said that the social network repeatedly prioritised “growth over safety” and is “tearing our societies apart”.
Facebook’s stock plummeted on Monday in the aftermath of Ms Haugen’s interview and as its companies experienced an extended service outage.
It was the worst session performance for the company in nearly a year with the share price falling 4.9 per cent – the worst decline since the five per cent drop recorded on 9 November 2020.
According to her written testimony, which is to be heard by the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday, Ms Haugen will compare the social media giant’s practices to those in the tobacco and motoring industries.
“When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action,” Ms Haugen said in her written testimony. “I implore you to do the same here.”
Earlier this year, Ms Haugen left Facebook, where she worked as a member of its misinformation team. Prior to leaving her role, she copied a series of internal memos and documents that have been shared by The Wall Street Journal over the past three weeks.
‘It is very possible that none of those ads were seen by a human'
Senator Lee presented examples of ads that targeted children with references to drug paraphernalia among other things and Ms Haugen explained how the review process works.
She explained that the company has a “deep focus on scale”.
“So scale is, ‘can we do things very cheaply for a huge number of people?’ Which is part of why they rely on AI so much. It is very possible none of those ads were seen by a human,” she explained
“And the reality is that we’ve seen from repeated documents within my disclosures, is that Facebook’s AI systems only catch a very tiny minority of offending content. And best-case scenario, and the case of something like hate speech, at most they will ever get 10 to 20 per cent.”
She continued: “In the case of children, that means drug paraphernalia ads like that, it’s likely if they rely on computers and not humans, they will also likely never get more than 10 to 20 per cent of those ads.”
Subcommittee resumes hearing with discussion on profitability
On whether Facebook would still be profitable if changes were made to its engagement-based ranking — designed to keep users engaged with the platform for longer — Ms Haugen says that the company “would still be profitable”.
She adds that being less toxic may even make the company more profitable in the longer-term.
There are longer-term implications of engagement
Ms Haugen says that there are women who have engaged with content relating to eating disorders who will suffer from brittle bones or be infertile in the future because of what they have seen or been led to on social media.
Earlier she said that users can be led by the algorithms from “something innocent like healthy recipes to anorexia-promoting content over a very short period of time”.
What does Ms Haugen recommend?
Senators have been direct in asking what Ms Haugen recommends in terms of regulation.
Senator Cruz asked how they can create more transparency from Facebook. Ms Haugen proposed developing a regulatory body of independent researchers who have the power to request data from Facebook.
Ms Haugen also supports a number of pieces of legislation that lawmakers are sponsoring to regulate big tech. She has said she supports reform of section 230, better data transparency laws, and a reduction in engagement-based algorithmic ranking (she favours chronological ranking).
Raise the age-limit
Haugen strongly encourages raising age limits for Facebook to 16 or 18 years old, based on looking at the data around problematic use or addiction on the platform, and children’s self-regulation issues.
Haugen believes Instagram is most damaging product
Compared to other social media sites and their focus on sharing ideas or communicating, Ms Haugen suggests that Instagram is perhaps the most damaging platform for younger people’s mental health as it is all about comparing bodies and lifestyles. This tracks with her earlier comments regarding eating disorders.
Haugen has concerns about national security
Ms Haugen says Facebook should disclose more information concerning areas such as counterespionage — a field in which she has experience.
“My team directly worked on tracking Chinese participation on the platform, surveilling, say, Uyghur populations, in places around the world. You could actually find the Chinese based on them doing these kinds of things,” Ms Haugen explained. “We also saw active participation of, say, the Iran government doing espionage on other state actors.”
“Facebook’s consistent understaffing of the counterespionage information operations and counter-terrorism teams is a national security issue, and I’m speaking to other parts of Congress about that … I have strong national security concerns about how Facebook operates today.”
Blumenthal believes other whistleblowers out there
Senator Blumenthal says to Ms Haugen: “I think there are other whistleblowers out there, I think you are leading by example. I think you are showing there is a path to making this industry more responsible.”
He adds that he hears of people who work at Facebook who wish they had the “courage and opportunity” to come forward as she has today.
Senator Blackburn invites Facebook to respond after spokesperson’s tweet
Responding to the earlier tweet from Facebook’s spokesperson during the hearing saying that Ms Haugen did not directly work on child safety, Senator Blackburn invites him to come and testify about the allegations of the platform invading the privacy of children.
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