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Facebook executive Nick Clegg took a damage control tour of U.S. political talk shows on Sunday, but remained elusive over questions about the social media giant’s contribution to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on the 6th. January of this year.
The former British Deputy Prime Minister, now Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, was reacting to a barrage of damaging claims from whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Appearing before a Senate committee this week, Haugen said a proliferation of unchecked disinformation and hate speech on Facebook helped cheer the pro-Trump mob that stormed Congress, seeking to overturn the election result .
Haugen will also meet with the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
Clegg insisted that individuals were responsible for their own actions on January 6, and wouldn’t say if he thought Facebook was responsible for amplifying toxic messages like Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election.
“Since we have thousands of algorithms and millions of people using it, I can’t give you a yes or no answer to the individual personalized feeds that each person uses,” Clegg told State of the Union from CNN.
“Where we see content that we think is relevant to the investigation, to law enforcement, of course, we cooperate. But if our algorithms are as bad as some suggest, why have these systems reduced the prevalence of hate speech on our platforms at 0.05%? ”
A week ago, Clegg lambasted suggestions that social media contributed to the insurgency as “ridiculous” and strongly resisted claims that Facebook ignored the issues on its platform.
But after Haugen’s searing testimony that Facebook was harming children and democracy around the world in its pursuit of “astronomical profits before people,” Clegg made a more contrite figure on CNN, NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week .
He described the steps he has taken to “reduce and mitigate the harm and amplify the good,” including new tools to keep users, especially teens, away from harmful content on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He also said Facebook was open to discussions on stricter regulations, including internet privacy legislation.
“We will, of course, be looking to make ourselves more and more transparent, so that people can hold us to account,” Clegg told ABC. “We understand that with success comes responsibility, comes criticism, comes scrutiny.
“We are going to give new tools to adults, to parents, so that they can supervise what their teens are doing online. And we want to give users more control. We give users the possibility to replace the algorithm, to compose their own news feed. Many people who use Facebook in the US and elsewhere want to see more friends, less politics.
Pressure is mounting in Congress for tighter restrictions on social media companies, including measures to break Facebook dating back to the Trump administration.
Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey said last month that Facebook was “like big tobacco, pushing a product they know is bad for the health of young people, offering it to them early on, all to make Facebook can earn money “.
Clegg said lawmakers should step in.
“We’re not saying this is a substitution of our own responsibilities,” he told NBC, “but there are a lot of things that only regulators and lawmakers can do. I don’t think anyone wants a private company to comment on these difficult tradeoffs between free speech on the one hand and moderation or removal of content on the other.
“Only lawmakers can create a digital regulator… we make the best judgment possible, but we’re caught in the middle. Lawmakers must resolve this on their own.
Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota and former Democratic presidential nomination contestant, praised Clegg’s stance, but said social media companies missed the opportunity to rule themselves.
“I appreciate that he wants to talk about things, but I think the time for conversation is over, the time for action is now,” she told CNN. “If they’re ready to sign, I totally agree, but so far we haven’t seen it.
“Look, where we are now, you know, the guy down the street[’s] the mother-in-law will not receive a vaccine because she read on social networks that she would implant a microchip in her arm. We need privacy legislation. We are one of the few countries that does not have a federal privacy policy. “
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