Lawmakers urged to solve ‚this crisis‘
Whistleblower Frances Haugen urged Congress to regulate Facebook’s algorithms that, she said, put immense profit before safety and society. “I am here today because I believe that Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy, and much more,” Haugen, a former program manager at Facebook, said [ PDF] at a Senate commerce and science subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. “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. They cannot solve this crisis without your help.” Facebook, which is used by 1.9 billion people every day, made a $29.1bn profit in 2020, up 58 per cent on the year before. A string of internal documents, leaked to the Wall Street Journal by Haugen and dubbed The Facebook Files, revealed how exactly the social media giant prioritizes growth and engagement over its users‘ well-being. Haugen outed herself on Sunday as the source of those leaks, saying she had „tens of thousands of pages of Facebook internal research“ to share, and added: „I have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real.“ In addition to her testimony to US lawmakers this week, Haugen, via Whistleblower Aid, has also filed eight complaints with America’s financial watchdog. These included claims Facebook misled people about how its platform was used in the January 6 insurrection attempt [ PDF], how it provided a moderation-free service exclusively to high-paying or celebrity users [ PDF], and how old its users are [ PDF]. It’s said its audience of US teens and young people is shrinking. „The company has also hidden the extent to which content production per user has been in long-term decline,“ states one of her complaints. Haugen, who previously worked for Google, Pinterest and Yelp in product and software roles, joined Facebook in 2019 and was on its then Civic Integrity team, filtering out political misinformation, and later in counter espionage for the biz. She said immediately after the 2020 US presidential election the unit was dispersed to work on other areas and attention on the issue of political misinformation dropped off.
