Facebook whistleblower slams leaders for ‘putting astronomical profits before people’ at hearing
Whistleblower Frances Haugen tears into Facebook execs for ‘putting astronomical profits before people’ and insists they KNOW its sites harm children and ‘lead to violence’ in blistering Senate hearing (while Zuckerberg goes SAILING)
Subcommittee Chairman Senator Richard Blumenthal called on Mark Zuckerberg to testify on the damning research in his opening statementThe whistleblower blamed Facebook for the January 6 Capitol riot and said they share guilt for the mass killings in MyanmarHaugen said that social media can lead to violence and needs regulatingShe told Congress Facebook executives regularly chose profits over safetyFacebook maintains that the whistleblower’s allegations are misleading
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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is urging Congress today to regulate social media, saying the sites are a threat to children and democracy and even lead to violence – while founder Mark Zuckerberg spends the day sailing.
The former employee, who worked for the tech giant in its misinformation department, told a Senate Commerce subcommittee that Facebook’s bosses ‘put their astronomical profits before people.’
Speaking to Senators on Tuesday, she celebrated a massive outage that hit Facebook and its related sites the day before.
‘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.’
Haugen 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.
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.’
Subcommittee chairman Senator Richard Blumenthal criticized Facebook’s founder 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.’
Haugen slammed Facebook for putting their profits before people during her testimony
Blumenthal called on him to testify on the damning research Haugen uncovered.
‘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.’
He 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.
During the hearing Haugen told Blumenthal that no similar company’s CEO has as much unilateral control as Zuckerberg does.
‘There is nobody currently holding Mark accountable but himself,’ she said.
‘Facebook needs to take responsibility for the consequences of its choices.’
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.’
‘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.’
She told Senator
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.
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
‘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.
