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WASHINGTON – A former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower on Tuesday gave lawmakers an unvarnished glimpse into the inner workings of the world’s largest social network and detailed how the company was deliberate in its efforts to keep people out – including children – clinging to his service.
In addition to three hours of testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Frances Haugen, who worked on Facebook’s civic disinformation team for nearly two years until May, spoke candidly and with a level of insight that company executives rarely provided. She said Facebook deliberately withheld disturbing research on how teenagers feel bad about themselves after using its products and how it is willing to use hateful content on its site to keep users coming back. .
Ms Haugen also gave lawmakers information on what other data they should ask Facebook, which could then lead to proposals to regulate the Silicon Valley giant as it increasingly faces questions on its global reach and power.
“I am here today because I believe that Facebook’s products harm children, fuel division and weaken our democracy,” Ms. Haugen, 37, said during her testimony. “The management of the company knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but will not make the necessary changes. “
After years of congressional hearings on Facebook and other big tech companies, Ms Haugen’s appearance stood out not only for her inner appearance, but also for how she united Republican and Democratic lawmakers around. of the question of the damage caused by the platform to adolescents. Some senators called his testimony a “big deal” moment for the tech industry.
Lawmakers said Ms Haugen’s testimony and the thousands of pages of documents she gathered from the company and then leaked showed senior Facebook executives had misled the public and could not be their trust.
“This research is the definition of a bomb,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who led the hearing.
Ms Haugen’s testimony before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection ended several weeks of intense scrutiny of Facebook after it leaked thousands of pages of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper’s coverage last month sparked one of Facebook’s worst public relations crises since a 2018 data privacy scandal with consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Ms Haugen’s identity as a whistleblower became public on Sunday when she set up a personal website and appeared on “60 Minutes”.
Facebook has repeatedly pushed back against criticism, saying its research has been taken out of context and misunderstood. Tuesday after the hearing, the company defended itself by questioning the credibility of Ms Haugen. Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said Ms Haugen had never attended a decision-making meeting with senior executives.
“We do not agree with her description of the many issues she testified to,” Ms. Pietsch said.
Lawmakers largely agreed at the hearing on the need to hold Facebook to account. They have raised a variety of legislative proposals, including bills that would require companies like Facebook to provide more transparency about the spread of disinformation and other harmful content.
“The tech gods have been debunked,” said Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi. “The children of America are addicted to their product. There is cynical knowledge on the part of these big tech companies that this is true. “
But senators have not provided a clear path to address the many issues Ms Haugen raised. Dozens of data privacy bills and changes to speech laws are blocked in Congress. House lawmakers have approved a series of bills intended to strengthen antitrust laws this year, but the entire House has not passed the legislation and its prospects in the Senate appear bleak.
Ms Haugen suggested legislation that would force companies like Facebook to open their systems to researchers to study the prevalence of hate speech and other harmful content.
“We cannot afford anything less than full transparency,” said Haugen, who added that she did not believe that antitrust action to dismantle Facebook would solve fundamental problems with the business model. “Left alone, Facebook will continue to make choices that go against the common good.”
Although the title of the hearing is “Protecting Kids Online,” lawmakers enamored Ms. Haugen on a wide variety of issues. They asked how Facebook amplified the dangerous rhetoric leading up to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, how misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines spread across its services, and how false information contributed to ethnic violence in Ethiopia. and Myanmar.
Ms Haugen gave detailed answers and repeated on several occasions that the leaders knew more about the issues than they suggested.
She also offered technological expertise on the technology behind the company’s services. She spoke of the dangers of “engagement-based ranking” or how Facebook and other social platforms use software to prioritize posts based on the number of likes, shares and comments they have. generate. She compared it to iMessage, Apple’s text messaging platform, which sorts messages in the order they arrived.
In addition to promoting damaging and hyper-engaging content in the United States, Facebook’s engagement-based ranking system “literally stirs up ethnic violence” in places like Ethiopia, she said.
Ms Haugen also criticized Facebook’s emphasis on technological tools to detect vaccines and other misinformation. Facebook is “too dependent on artificial intelligence systems which they believe will probably never get more than 10-20% of the content,” she said.
Several senators blasted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for making decisions that avoided security and privacy. Mr. Zuckerberg approved of promoting the posts that generated the most engagement.
“So this is my message to Mark Zuckerberg: your time to invade our privacy, promote toxic content, and prey on children and teens is over,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Mr Blumenthal said after the hearing: “Facebook is a black box and Mark Zuckerberg is the chief algorithm designer.
Ms. Haugen studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at Olin College and received an MBA from Harvard. She then worked at companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, Pinterest and Yelp. She left Facebook after nearly two years managing counterintelligence as part of the Civic Disinformation Team, according to her personal website.
At Facebook, said Ms Haugen, she has noticed a tendency for the company to choose to ignore warnings about damage caused by its service. The last straw came in December when the company disbanded its group, which was tasked with stopping the spread of disinformation.
“It really sounded like betrayal,” Ms. Haugen said.
In addition to sharing the documents with lawmakers and the Journal, she sent some to the offices of at least five state attorneys general and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawyers for Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal group that represents Ms Haugen, urged the SEC to open an investigation that Facebook withheld evidence that would affect its financial performance.
Mr Blumenthal said after the hearing he would ask the Federal Trade Commission and the SEC to investigate Facebook for “a number of misleading allegations” that have been made to consumers, the public and consumers. investors. He added that Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to appear before Congress.
“If he disagrees in any way with anything that has been said here, he is the one who should come forward, he is the one responsible,” Blumenthal said.
The report was provided by Mike isaac, Sheera frenkel, Ryan mac and Kevin roose.
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