Social media platform is ‘urgent threat to the US’
A former Facebook employee has told the US Congress that the social media company poses “one of the most urgent threats” to America and should be regulated.
Frances Haugen, a data scientist who worked on Facebook’s civic integrity team, said yesterday that not only does the platform keep its algorithms and operations a secret, it is responsible for fuelling hate-filled content.
“I’m here today because I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” she said.
“In places like Ethiopia, it is fuelling ethnic violence. They need to take responsibility.”
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Ms Haugen said Facebook put profits before the well-being of its users.
She repeated that accusation to the Congressional panel and said Facebook was “accountable to no one”.
Her comments created a rare moment of harmony between Republicans and Democrats, with politicians from both parties pursuing similar lines of questioning.
It came a day after Facebook and its other apps suffered a major loss of services.
“I don’t know why it went down, but I know that for more than five hours Facebook wasn’t used to deepen divides, destabilise democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies,” she said.
She has given internal documents to Congress and The Wall Street Journal, which has reported that the social media company contributed to increased polarisation online when it made changes to its content algorithm.
Facebook also failed to take steps to reduce vaccine hesitancy and knew Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls, it reported.
Ms Haugen said those in charge of the company know how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but they have put “their astronomical profits” before people.
Facebook said Ms Haugen worked at the company for less than two years and was not privy to executive decision making.
“We don’t agree with her characterisation of the many issues she testified about. Despite all this, we agree on one thing: it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet,” Facebook said.