FACEBOOK FUMBLES
Social media behemoth facing increased scrutiny Facebook can decide to be honest on its own — or Congress can force it to be
That the source behind tens of thousands of pages of leaked internal research from Facebook is being referred to as a whistleblower is a testament to the impact that company has on the public interest — for good or, as the revelations of recent weeks show, for ill.
Frances Haugen, formerly a product manager in the firm’s civic integrity division, disclosed her identity this weekend on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” When she testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday, her remarks are expected to home in on Instagram’s effects on teen girls. Yet the documents she has shared cover the panoply of her erstwhile employer’s struggles to contain the natural impulse of any platform in the attention economy: to optimize for whatever keeps people scrolling and clicking, regardless of the consequences. The fact that these papers exist shows that Facebook isn’t ignoring its problems; the fact that they’ve only made their way into the open through secrecy and subversion, however, is a big problem in itself.
The whistleblower’s main contention is that Facebook knows the harm its products cause, yet has hidden that harm from outsiders as it continues to prioritize profits. Certainly, some data points are troubling: When an algorithmic shift intended to increase “meaningful social interaction” actually escalated the rage expressed on the site, for example, major political parties in Europe warned that the change had pushed them toward more extreme policy positions. Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, argued Sunday on CNN that Facebook is not the chief cause of polarization, but that’s hardly the point. The point is whether Facebook can worsen the divisiveness that afflicts society today and what responsibility it has to try to do the opposite.
The trade-offs faced by Facebook are tricky, whether they involve vaccine falsehoods that are spread on the flagship platform or disordered eating and depression that is triggered on Instagram. Not only do these forces often pit safety against growth statistics, but they can introduce other competing interests when it comes to free expression. Any time Facebook alters its ranking system to slow down sensationalism, or introduces so-called circuit-breaker measures to cut off dangerous posts before they go viral, innocuous material may become a casualty. And systems designed to account for these complexities can be corrupted, too: The cross-checking protocol Facebook created to review content from prominent people, for example, ended up protecting big-shots against enforcement.
How to resolve these dilemmas is a discussion that cannot take place only within Facebook itself. After all, though the company has made some laudable changes over time, the teams tasked with questioning the status quo ended up, as the now-departed founder and chief of Facebook’s civic integrity efforts puts it, “in a state of despair around the inaction.” Finally, one of them took her case to the press and the public. Lawmakers on Tuesday may well want to yell about (and at) Facebook, and some of that is warranted. Yet they should realize that to glean the necessary information for addressing these issues they must first demand transparency, and likely mandate it through legislation. Or Facebook, to spare itself the drama of another whistle-blown scandal, could be more honest on its own.