By Macy Gordon, The Associated Press
A former Facebook data scientist told Congress today that Facebook’s products harm children and fuel polarization in the U.S. She said its executives refuse to change because they elevate profits over safety and placed the responsibility upon CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Frances Haugen, 37, testified to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. She accused the company of being aware of apparent harm to some teens from Instagram and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation.
“Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” Haugen said. “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
“Congressional action is needed,” she said. “They won’t solve this crisis without your help.”
Haugen said the company has acknowledged publicly that integrity controls were crucially needed for its systems that increase the engagement of users, but then it disabled some of those controls.
Haugen focused on algorithm products in her work at Facebook. She explained the importance of algorithms that govern what shows up on users’ news feeds.
Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, she said Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back — a pattern that helped the social media giant sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its revenue.
Senators agreed.
“It has profited off spreading misinformation and disinformation and sowing hate,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the panel’s chairman. “Facebook’s answers to Facebook’s destructive impact always seems to be more Facebook, we need more Facebook — which means more pain, and more money for Facebook.”
Haugen said she believed Facebook didn’t set out to build a destructive platform. But “in the end, the buck stops with Mark,” she said referring to Zuckerberg, who controls more than 50% of Facebook’s voting shares. “There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself.”
The government needs to step in with stricter oversight of the company, Haugen said.
Content directly harms kids
The subcommittee 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% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.
“Facebook knows that they are leading young users to anorexia content. … It’s just like cigarettes. Teenagers don’t have any self-regulation. We need to protect the kids,” Haugen said.
Haugen has come forward with a wide-ranging condemnation of Facebook, filled with tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit. She also has filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but the company hides what it knows.
“The company intentionally hides vital information from the public, from the U.S. government and from governments around the world,” Haugen said. “The documents I have provided to Congress prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about the safety of children, the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.”
As the public relations debacle over the Instagram research grew last week, Facebook put on hold its work on a kids’ version of Instagram, which the company says is meant mainly for tweens aged 10 to 12.
Haugen said that Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and incitement to violence after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
After the November election, Facebook dissolved the civic integrity unit where Haugen had been working. That, she says, 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.”
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.
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.”