Instagram algorithms would have shown Molly Russell harmful content before she looked for it

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Instagram’s algorithms would have shown tragic teenager Molly Russell harmful content even before she started looking for it, according to the Facebook whistleblower who will give evidence to MPs today.

The schoolgirl, of Harrow, north-west London, viewed thousands of graphic images of self-harm and suicide in the six months before she took her own life aged 14 in 2017, and an inquest due next year will seek to find out what role social media platforms played in her death. 

Instagram and its parent company Facebook have been under increasing pressure ever since whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that tech bosses knew that the app worsened youngsters’ mental health.  

Molly’s father Ian Russell, who has previously accused Facebook-owned Instagram of ‘helping to kill’ his daughter, read an extract from a note she left her family before killing herself in which she described how she was ‘living in a trap’ and was ‘addicted’ to social media. 

Appearing on BBC Newsday last night, Mr Russell told Miss Haugen: ‘One of the things that led us to find out more about Molly was some notes that she left that were found after she died. And in one of them she wrote: ”I keep a lot to myself and it keeps building up inside. You get addicted to it and you don’t even realise you’ve spun out of control. You’re living in a trap, in a circle.”’

He added: ‘As time goes on, as a parent bereaved by the suicide of his 14-year-old, I look at a huge corporation with massive resources and say, ”there must be more you can be doing”.’

Yesterday Miss Haugen suggested that Instagram’s algorithms may have shown Molly harmful content before she had even searched for it. She said that while the teenager may have ‘followed some stuff related to being a little blue’ the platform would have taken her down a dangerous rabbit hole.

The former Facebook employee told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘I guarantee you that with the algorithm, if she kept engaging, it just kept getting worse.

‘Imagine you are kind of a fragile teen and you are being exposed to a little bit of stuff, talking about how you are worthless, and then [you] engage a little bit and it keeps getting worse and worse. It is bad.’ 

Miss Haugen is due to give evidence in Westminster on Monday to a joint committee scrutinising the draft Online Safety Bill.

The Bill will impose a duty of care on social media companies to protect users from harmful content and hand Ofcom the power to fine them up to 10 per cent of their global turnover.

Others due to give evidence to the committee in the coming weeks include MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis and barrister Gavin Millar QC.

Also speaking will be Society of Editors president Alison Gow and Peter Wright, editor emeritus at DMG Media, whose brands include MailOnline and the Daily Mail.

The Home Secretary stepped in earlier this year to criticise the move, which would mean only the sender and recipient can see the message. Priti Patel warned that it would severely hamper the police in their efforts to ‘tackle abhorrent criminal acts and protect victims’.

Defending the plans, Facebook said it was to keep users safe from hackers and that it would ‘continue to receive user reports of suspicious messages’.

Ahead of the hearing, Miss Haugen also warned that plans by Facebook to encrypt some of its services – including Instagram – would make it more difficult for law enforcement to catch criminals.

Miss Haugen, who quit as a Facebook product manager in May, has leaked thousands of internal documents revealing how much it knew its platforms were impacting children.

It included statistics showing Instagram content made a third of young users feel worse about their bodies. 

Misss Haugen has claimed Facebook’s products ‘harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy’, accusing the firm, founded by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, of refusing to change its products because executives elevate profits over safety.  

Miss Haugen’s intervention comes as yet more damaging reports emerge about the tech giant over the weekend after she gave several US news outlets access to the confidential research. 

One revealed how 10 per cent of all US views of political material on Facebook were posts falsely alleging the 2020 US presidential election had been fraudulent.

Yet attempts to stop this had been ‘piecemeal’, according to one document, which has reignited concerns about the company’s role in the Capitol Hill riots in January.

Miss Haugen said Mr Zuckerberg, who controls the business with a majority of its voting shares, had shown no inclination to protect the public. She told The Observer: ‘Right now, Mark is unaccountable. He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety.’ 

Britain’s data protection watchdog wrote to Miss Haugen to request her full evidence to see whether the social networking giant ever breached UK law.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she particularly wants to see all of Miss Haugen’s files to examine them for violations in relation to the online protection of children.

‘We’re looking very closely about what is publicly available right now from Frances’s testimony, but I’ve also written to her to ask for access to the full reports of her allegations,’ Ms Denham told BBC News.

‘Because what I want to do with that information is analyse it from the UK’s perspective – are these harms applicable in the UK, especially through the lens of children?

‘We have rolled out a new children’s code which specifies design consideration to protect kids online. I want to see if these allegations point to any contravention of UK law and then I will take action.’

Facebook has rejected Ms Haugen’s claims, with Mr Zuckerberg saying her attacks on the company were ‘misrepresenting’ the work it does.

He said the company ‘cares deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health’ and that Miss Haugen’s recent evidence to a US congressional committee ‘just doesn’t reflect the company we know’.

‘At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritise profit over safety and well-being. That’s just not true,’ he added.

Miss Haugen further warned against Facebook’s controversial plans to encrypt its Messenger app and Instagram’s direct messages. 

Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs Sir Nick Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister, rejected the allegations. 

According to a memo sent to staff on Saturday, Sir Nick warned Facebook workers to  ‘steel [themselves] for more bad headlines in the coming days’ as a cadre of news outlets begin to print fresh claims from Miss Haugen.

Sir Nick warned in the email that new coverage may contain ‘mischaracterizations of our research, our motives and where our priorities lie,’ and told employees to ‘listen and learn from criticism when it is fair, and push back strongly when its not.’

‘But above all else,’ he wrote to Facebook staffers, according to Axios, ‘We should keep our heads held high and do the work we came here to do.’

He spoke as two dozen outlets which obtained fresh revelations from Miss Haugen broke an embargo set to expire Monday, and began printing fresh revelations.

Those included the social network struggling to work out exactly how many active users it has, and the fact that Facebook is so afraid of being seen to have a liberal bias that it ‘bends over backwards’ to avoid imposing its own rules on conservative publishers.

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