Ex-Facebook employee asks lawmakers to step in: Will they?
Camera lights glare. Outrage thunders from elected representatives. A brave industry whistleblower stands alone and takes the oath behind a table ringed by a photographers’ mosh pit.
The former Facebook product manager who has accused the social network giant of threatening children’s safety — and the integrity of democracy — is urging Congress to rein in a largely unregulated company. The drama rings familiar, but will real change come this time?
When Frances Haugen came before a Senate Commerce panel to lay out a far-reaching condemnation of Facebook, she had prescriptions for actions by Congress at the ready. Not a breakup of the tech giant as many lawmakers are calling for, but targeted legislative remedies.
They include new curbs on the long-standing legal protections for speech posted on social media platforms. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have called for stripping away some of the protections that shield internet companies from liability for what users post. Haugen’s idea would be to remove the protections in cases where dominant content driven by computer algorithms favors massive engagement by users over public safety.
“Congressional action is needed,” Haugen told the senators in her testimony Tuesday. “(Facebook) won’t solve this crisis without your help.”
Democrats and Republicans have shown a rare unity around the revelations of Facebook’s handling of potential risks to teens from Instagram.
“We’re going to propose legislation,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who heads the Senate subcommittee, told reporters. “And the days of Facebook evading oversight are over, because I think the American public is aroused about the importance of ... (social media) preying on their own children.”
How soon is another question.
“I think it will eventually result in legislation, but it won’t be right away,” said former congressional aide Phil Schiliro.
Schiliro was there. He fought the congressional Big Tobacco wars in the 1990s as chief of staff to Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who headed the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Congress enacted landmark legislation reining in the tobacco industry by giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products. In the current Facebook scandal, critics of the company are pointing to it as a model for what Congress should do with the tech industry.
History, however, offers a cautionary note. It took 15 years, Schiliro notes, for tobacco legislation to get through Congress.