[ad_1]
By MARCY GORDON
WASHINGTON (AP) – A former Facebook data scientist told Congress on Tuesday that the social media giant’s products are harming children and fueling polarization in the United States as its executives refuse to make changes because they raised profits at the expense of security.
Frances Haugen testified before the Senate Trade Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. She accuses the company of being aware of the apparent harm done to some teens by Instagram and of being dishonest in its public fight against hatred and misinformation.
Haugen has passed a broad condemnation of Facebook, backed up by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents that she secretly copied before quitting her job in the company’s civic integrity unit. She has also filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that Facebook’s own research shows it amplifies hatred, disinformation and political unrest, but the company is hiding what it knows.
Haugen says she speaks out because she believes “Facebook products harm children, fuel division and weaken our democracy.”
“The management of the company knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but will not make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits ahead of people,” she said in her written testimony prepared for the hearing. “Congress action is needed. They will not solve this crisis without your help.
After recent Wall Street Journal articles based on documents she leaked to the newspaper sparked public outcry, Haugen revealed her identity in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night. She insisted that “Facebook, time and time again, has shown it prefers profit over security.”
The ex-employee challenging the social media giant with 2.8 billion users worldwide and nearly $ 1,000 billion in market value is a 37-year-old data expert from Iowa with a degree in engineering computer science and master’s degree in commerce from Harvard. Before being hired by Facebook in 2019, she worked for 15 years at technology companies such as Google, Pinterest, and Yelp.
The panel examines Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers on Instagram that could indicate potential harm to some of its young users, especially girls, while publicly downplaying negative impacts. For some of the devoted teens to Facebook’s popular photo-sharing platform, the peer pressure generated by visually focused Instagram has resulted in mental health and body image issues, and in some cases, disturbances. diet and suicidal thoughts, research disclosed by Haugen has shown.
An internal study cited 13.5% of teenage girls as saying Instagram made suicidal thoughts worse and 17% of teenage girls saying it made eating disorders worse.
“The company intentionally hides vital information from the public, the US government, and governments around the world,” Haugen said in his written testimony. “The documents I have provided to Congress prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about child safety, the effectiveness of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in dissemination of conflicting and extreme messages.
As the public relations debacle over Instagram search escalated over the past week, Facebook suspended work on a kids’ version of Instagram, which the company says is primarily aimed at tweens ages 10 to 10. 12 years.
What is at issue are the algorithms that govern what appears on user newsfeeds and how they promote hateful content. Haugen, who has focused on algorithmic products in her work at Facebook, said a 2018 change in the flow of content contributed to more division and unwillingness in a network ostensibly created to bring people together. Despite the enmity the new algorithms were fueling, Facebook found they were helping people come back – a model that has helped the social media giant sell more digital ads that generate most of its revenue.
Haugen’s criticisms go beyond the situation on Instagram. She says Facebook prematurely deactivated safeguards designed to thwart disinformation and incitement to violence after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging it contributed to the deadly Jan.6 assault on Capitol Hill American.
After the November election, Facebook disbanded the Civic Integrity Unit where Haugen worked. It was then, she says, that she realized “I don’t believe they’re willing to invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous. “
Haugen says she told Facebook executives when they recruited her that she wanted to work in an area of the company that combats disinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.
Facebook maintains that Haugen’s claims are misleading and insists that there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that it is the main cause of social polarization.
“Even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we are deploying, even with the tens of thousands of people we employ to try to maintain security and integrity on our platform, we are never going to be absolutely at the top of that 100% of the time, ”Facebook vice president of policy and public affairs Nick Clegg said Sunday of CNN’s“ trusted sources ”.
This is because of the “instant and spontaneous form of communication” on Facebook, Clegg said, adding, “I think we are doing more than any reasonable person can expect.”
In coming forward, Haugen says she hopes it will prompt the government to put regulations in place for Facebook’s activities. Like other tech giants Google, Amazon and Apple, Facebook has enjoyed minimal regulation in Washington for years.
Separately on Monday, a massive global blackout plunged Facebook, Instagram and the company’s WhatsApp messaging platform into chaos, only gradually dissipating on Monday evening Eastern Time. For some users, WhatsApp worked for a while and then didn’t. For others, Instagram worked but Facebook didn’t, etc.
Facebook did not say what could have caused the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. EDT and still has not been fixed more than six hours later.
___
Follow Marcy Gordon on https://twitter.com/mgordonap.
[ad_2]
Source link