[ad_1]
After more than three hours of testimony, the Senate Commerce Subcommittee hearing with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who accused the company of deceiving users and investors and putting “profits before profits. people “, was adjourned.
As lawmakers wrangle over President Joe Biden’s agenda, they united on Tuesday in denouncing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s silence over Haugen’s accusations, which warn about children’s mental health and the speech’s real dangers of hate, she said. Facebook knows this continues, but ignores it. Lawmakers said she provided hundreds of pages of internal data documents to back up her claims.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Chairman of the subcommittee, concluded by reading a text he said he received from a voter who said he was in tears watching the hearing because, he said, he saw firsthand how Instagram changed his teenage daughter.
“’My 15 year old daughter loved her body at 14. She was constantly on Instagram and maybe posting too much. Suddenly she started to hate her body. Her body was dysmorphic, now anorexia, and had big problems before. to find a cure. I’m afraid she’ll never be the same again, “Blumenthal said, citing the father.
Haugen said “due to the nature of the ranking based on engagement and amplification of interests”, Facebook and Instagram users are “being pushed very quickly into extreme diets and pro-anorexia content” – but that the algorithm perpetuating this could be changed.
After raising new allegations about Zuckerberg’s actions, national security concerns and employee bonuses linked to a system that fuels disinformation, Haugen closed with a call to Congress to fight Facebook’s growth and provide oversight as is done historically for other industries, such as tobacco, in the past.
Claiming that modern technological systems were “silos”, Haugen also called on more whistleblowers with first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in big tech to come forward.
“The fact that we are being asked these false choices – it’s just an illustration of what happens when the real solutions are hidden inside companies,” she said. “We need more technical workers to come forward through legitimate channels, like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Congress, to make sure the public has the information they need so that technology is focused on. human and not on the computer. “
[ad_2]
Source link