The case for regulating Facebook, as told by whistleblowers
The congressional testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that it was always unrealistic to expect that the social media behemoth would ever police itself or place progress over profit.
Now, following Haugen, Sophie Zhang — a second whistleblower and former Facebook data scientist — has said she’s also willing to make a Congressional appeal.
Haugen’s leaks regarding the secretive tech company showed us the extent that Facebook’s algorithms promoted disinformation and harmful speech; Zhang, who spoke before the U.K. Parliament on Oct. 18, highlighted how Facebook actively allowed authoritarian governments to post chaos-sewing propaganda — most famously during the 2016 election.
Both whistleblowers’ accounts emphasize the exceptional status we’ve granted to Facebook since its founding.
No other industry has been so trusted to regulate itself.
Trust in the system provides consumers confidence that they are exposed to minimal harm. But, as we learned from Haugen and Zhang, Facebook disregards the role it plays in inciting political conflict.
Nearly 70% of Americans have a Facebook account, more than any other social media platform with the exception of YouTube.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested a need for regulation many times in the last few years, but his vision resembles more of a self-regulation than a truly independent, autonomous process that would remove profits and minimize bias in evaluating actions.
Facebook is also facing a legal challenge on the Cambridge Analytica leaks of 2018. The lawsuit alleges Facebook knowingly misled up to 87 million users on the privacy of its software as their data was being obtained by the British political consulting firm.
On Monday, a consortium of 17 U. S. news organizations began publishing a trove of documents — based on Haugen’s disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission — collectively called “the Facebook Papers.”
So far, they’ve shed more light on Facebook’s inability to constrain hate speech and the spread of misinformation in non-English-speaking countries, as well its inability to stop its platform from being used for criminal activities.
This increased attention on Facebook’s misdeeds is a good start toward reigning in the social media giant because, as Haugen put it, the company “can change but is clearly not going to do so on its own.”