If Facebook is the problem, is a regulator the fix?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told Congress on Tuesday that one option for making social media less harmful would be to create a dedicated regulatory agency to oversee companies like Facebook.

“Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to... understand what’s happening inside of Facebook are people who grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest or another social media company,” she said during a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee.

Haugen, a former product manager at the company, said the profit motive is strong enough that Facebook, which owns Instagram, would not change without pressure.

“Until incentives change at Facebook, we should not expect Facebook to change. We need action from Congress,” she said.

Haugen also said that if she were made CEO of Facebook, she would immediately establish a policy that would allow it to share internal research with Congress and other oversight bodies, calling for transparency and public scrutiny of Facebook’s systems, algorithms and research into its impacts.

Facebook’s Lina Pietsch said the company had itself long called for government oversight. “We have been calling for updated regulations ourselves for two-and-a-half years,” she said.

It has previously called for regulation of the Internet, including a digital regulator, particularly a reform of Section 230 to give the companies immunity from liability only if they follow best practices.

At the hearing, lawmakers did not push back at Haugen’s suggestions for reform but, in many cases, pointed to legislation that would do something similar.

A bipartisan group of senators, including Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, introduced a bill in June that would require big Internet platforms, including Facebook, to allow users to view content not been decided by an algorithm.

Haugen also encouraged lawmakers to reform Section 230. She urged the law be changed to hold companies accountable for their algorithms, which often decide what social media users see when they sign in.

Haugen also encouraged raising age limits for users of Facebook’s platforms from 13 to 16 or 18, given what she referred to as “problematic use” or addiction on the sites and children’s issues with self-regulation.