Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told Congress on Tuesday the social media giant puts their ‘astronomical profits’ over safety, accused execs of knowing their products harm children and said the site is a threat to democracy and causes violence.
Haugen also said during her blistering testimony that Mark Zuckerberg is only ‘accountable to himself’ and has even been directly involved in company decisions that saw Facebook putting profit over ‘changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation, hate speech and other inciting content.’
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal kicked off the hearing by calling Facebook ‘morally bankrupt’ and criticized Zuckerberg for going sailing in Hawaii with wife Priscilla Chan instead of answering questions from lawmakers.
Senator Ed Markey also piled on the absent tech billionaire, addressing him by name during the hearing to warn him that ‘Congress will be taking action’ with or without his help.
‘Your time of invading privacy, promoting toxic content, and preying on children and teens is over. Congress will be taking action. You can work with us, or not work with us, but we will not allow your company to harm our children and our families and out democracy any longer,’ Markey said.
In her opening statement Haugen said: ‘Yesterday we saw Facebook get taken off the internet. I don’t know why it went down, but I do know for more than five hours, Facebook wasn’t used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies.’
She told senators that no similar company’s CEO has as much unilateral control as Zuckerberg does.
‘Mark holds a very unique role in the tech industry in that he holds over 55% of all the voting shares for Facebook. There are no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled,’ she said. ‘There’s no one currently holding him accountable but himself.’
She said ‘the buck stops with’ Facebook’s tech billionaire owner, adding that ‘Facebook needs to take responsibility for the consequences of its choices.’
Later in the hearing Haugen said Zuckerberg himself even made choices that put engagement over public safety.
‘We have a few choice documents that contain notes from briefings with Mark Zuckerberg where he chose metrics defined by Facebook like “meaningful social interactions” over changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation, hate speech and other inciting content,’ she told Senator Ben Ray Lujan.
Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen arrives to testify during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday
Ranking member Senator Marsha Blackburn and Chairman Richard Blumenthal look on as Haugen testifies
Haugen suggested Facebook’s self-created burden could have gotten so large that they simply didn’t know what to do with it and felt ‘trapped’
Markey lauded Haugen as a ‘Twenty-first century American hero’ for speaking out against the social media giant.
He also accused Facebook of being built on ‘computer codes of misconduct.’
‘Time and time again Facebook says one thing and does another. Time and time again Facebook fails to abide by the commitments that they had made. Time and time again, Facebook lies about what they are doing,’ he said.
‘Facebook’s platforms are not safe for young people, as you said Facebook is like big tobacco, enticing young kids with that first cigarette…whistleblowing shows that Facebook uses harmful features.’
During his second round of hearing Markey accused Facebook of using lobbyists to block legislators’ reform efforts.
Blumenthal criticized Facebook’s founder earlier on in his opening statement on Tuesday morning.
‘Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror today,’ the Connecticut Democrat said. ‘And yet rather than taking responsibility and showing leadership, Mr. Zuckerberg is going sailing.’
‘Mark Zuckerberg you need to come before this committee, you need to explain to Frances Hougan, to us, to the world, and to the parents of America – what you were doing and why you did it.’
At another point in the hearing Haugen was asked by Senator Dan Sullivan about what perspective people will have on Facebook years from now.
She answered: ‘When Facebook has made statements in the past about how much benefit Instagram is providing to kids’ mental health, like kids are connecting who were once alone, what I’m so surprised about that is – if Instagram is such a positive force, have we seen a golden age of teenage mental health in the last 10 years? No, we’ve seen escalating rates of depression and suicide among teenagers.’
Haugen added that the use of social media ‘amplified’ the risk of that, attributing it to Facebook’s own research.
Haugen suggested a government entity be created to regulate Facebook during the scathing Senate hearing on Tuesday
The whistleblower acknowledged that the site’s mounting problems could be too large for it to handle on its own.
‘You can declare moral bankruptcy and we can figure out how to fix these things together, because we solve problems together and we don’t solve them alone,’ she said.
She suggested Facebook’s self-created burden could have gotten so large that they simply didn’t know what to do with it.
‘Facebook is stuck in a feedback loop they cannot get out of. They have been hiding this information because they feel trapped. Like, they would have come forward if they had solutions to these things. They need to admit they did something wrong, and that they need help to solve these problems.’
But she also doubted that Facebook’s lack of solutions came from a lack of ‘private research’ as an executive once said.
‘If they make $40 billion per year, they have the resources to solve these problems, they’re choosing not to solve them,’ she told Senator Rick Scott.
Senator Ed Markey directed a message at Zuckerberg: ‘Your time of invading privacy, promoting toxic content, and preying on children and teens is over. Congress will be taking action’
She also said Facebook had done too little to prevent its platform from being used by people planning violence.
‘The result has been a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization’ and undermining societies around the world. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people,’ she said.
Haugen told Republican Senator Mike Lee that Facebook’s artificial intelligence systems designed to filter out harmful content were relatively ineffective at catching hate speech – and even sometimes allowed drug-related content to get to kids.
‘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 percent. 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 percent of those ads,’ she said.
A Facebook executive went after Haugen during the hearing, pointing out that she did not work on the child safety data she was testifying on at the hearing.
‘Just pointing out the fact that @FrancesHaugen did not work on child safety or Instagram or research these issues and has no direct knowledge of the topic from her work at Facebook,’ Policy Communications Director Andy Stone wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
Senator Marsha Blackburn responded to Stone’s tweet during the hearing.
‘I will simply say this to Mr. Stone: If Facebook wants to discuss their targeting of children, if they want to discuss their practices of privacy invasion or violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Act, I am extending to you an invitation to step forward, be sworn in and testify before this committee. We would be pleased to hear from you and welcome your testimony,’ Blackburn said.
Haugen has said multiple times during the hearing that she didn’t work in child safety but claimed the documents she viewed and leaked were available to all staff.
Facebook was used by people planning mass killings in Myanmar and in the Jan. 6 assault by Trump supporters who were determined to toss out the 2020 election results.
After the November election, Facebook dissolved the civic integrity union where Haugen had been working. That, she said, was the moment she realized ‘I don´t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.’
Haugen was greeted by Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Amy Klobuchar when she arrived for her testimony
Speaking to Senators on Tuesday, Haugen celebrated a massive outage that hit Facebook and its related sites the day before
Blumenthal said Facebook was facing a ‘big tobacco moment’ in the country’s reckoning over its impact on a generation of young people, slamming the company as ‘morally bankrupt.’
‘The damage to self interest and self worth inflicted by Facebook today will haunt a generation,’ Blumenthal said. ‘Feelings of inadequacy, and insecurity, rejection and self hatred will impact this generation for years to come.
Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis, who testified before the same panel last week, defended her company in an MSNBC interview during the hearing.
‘Of course we want to allow for freedom of expression, but one of the underlying principles behind the work that we do is ensuring people’s safety and security. Most people really do feel quite safe and secure on our platform, and they’re coming back and using our platform because they do feel safe and secure, and we are doing a good job to get that content off. But I do think there are validation systems that people want in place,’ she said.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is on the subcommittee, asked Haugen if the site removed safeguards against misinformation it had implemented for the election before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump because it cost the company money.
Haugen said the social media giant knew the content that was being shared was ‘dangerous’ before they increased site security but dropped those standards for the sake of ‘growth.’
‘Facebook has been emphasizing a false choice. They’ve said the safeguards that were in place before the election implicated free speech. The choices that were happening on the platform were really about how reactive and twitchy was the platform.’
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are out sailing today. Senators criticized the tech billionaire for hitting the waves instead of attending the Senate hearing
Another image from Mark Zuckerberg’s sailing trip captured by the tech billionaire
‘Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous. And because they wanted that growth back…they returned to their original defaults.’
After recent reports in The Wall Street Journal based on documents she leaked to the newspaper raised a public outcry, Haugen revealed her identity in a CBS ’60 Minutes’ interview aired Sunday night.
She claims Facebook had a role in the January 6 Capitol riots and is damaging for teenagers, particularly young girls.
Her prepared statement said: ‘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. I implore you to do the same here.’
Haugen called for a regulatory agency within the government to oversee the social media giant.
She told Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas that Facebook and Instagram were knowingly exacerbating problems that kids face.
‘They know that severe harm is happening to children,’ Haugen said.
She later said Facebook targets ‘children as young as eight’ for its Messenger Kids app, and goes after kids under age 18 for Instagram.
The ex-employee challenging the social network giant with 2.8 billion users worldwide and nearly $1 trillion in market value is a 37-year-old data expert from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in business from Harvard.
She worked at companies including Google and Pinterest for 15 years prior to being recruited by Facebook in 2019.
‘The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people. Congressional action is needed,’ she will say.
‘As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good.’
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (pictured) will urge Congress today to regulate social media, saying the sites harm children and even lead to violence
Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is on the subcommittee, asked Haugen about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol
Haugen, who worked as a product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, was the whistleblower who provided documents used in a Wall Street Journal investigation and a Senate hearing on Instagram’s harm to teen girls.
The panel is examining Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers on Instagram that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, while it publicly downplayed the negative impacts.
For some of the teens devoted to Facebook´s popular photo-sharing platform, the peer pressure generated by the visually focused Instagram led to mental health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research leaked by Haugen showed.
One internal study cited 13.5 percent of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17 percent of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.
Facebook owns Instagram as well as WhatsApp.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Haugen added that ‘Facebook’s closed design means it has no oversight even from its own Oversight Board, which is as blind as the public.’
That makes it impossible for regulators to serve as a check, she added.
‘This inability to see into the actual systems of Facebook and confirm that Facebook’s systems work like they say is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by watching them drive down the highway,’ her testimony says. ‘Imagine if no regulator could ride in a car, pump up its wheels, crash test a car, or even know that seat belts could exist.’
The Journal’s stories, based on Facebook internal presentations and emails, showed the company contributed to increased polarization online when it made changes to its content algorithm; failed to take steps to reduce vaccine hesitancy; and was aware that Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls.
Haugen says she told Facebook executives when they recruited her that she had asked to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, faced a barrage of criticism from senators on the Commerce panel at a hearing last Thursday. They accused Facebook of concealing the negative findings about Instagram and demanded a commitment from the company to make changes.
Davis defended Instagram’s efforts to protect young people using its platform. She disputed the way The Wall Street Journal story describes what the research shows.
Facebook maintains that Haugen’s allegations are misleading and insists there is no evidence to support the premise that it is the primary cause of social polarization.
‘Even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we deploy, even with the tens of thousands of people that we employ to try and maintain safety and integrity on our platform, we´re never going to be absolutely on top of this 100% of the time,’ Nick Clegg, Facebook´s vice president of policy and public affairs, said Sunday on CNN´s ‘Reliable Sources.’
That’s because of the ‘instantaneous and spontaneous form of communication’ on Facebook, Clegg said, adding, ‘I think we do more than any reasonable person can expect to.’
By coming forward, Haugen says she hopes it will help spur the government to put regulations in place for Facebook´s activities. Like fellow tech giants Google, Amazon and Apple, Facebook has for years enjoyed minimal regulation in Washington.
Separately Monday, a massive global outage plunged Facebook, Instagram and the company’s WhatsApp messaging platform into chaos, only gradually dissipating by late Monday Eastern time. For some users, WhatsApp was working for a time, then not. For others, Instagram was working but not Facebook, and so on.
Facebook didn’t say what might have caused the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. EDT and was still not fixed more than six hours later.
The panel is examining Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers on Instagram that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users
Source: Daily Mail