A former Facebook employee has told US politicians that the company’s sites and apps harm children’s mental health and stoke division in society, BBC reports.
Haugen’s accusations and Mark’s absolve
Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old former product manager turned whistleblower, heavily criticized the company at a hearing in the Senate.
Facebook has faced growing scrutiny and increasing calls for its regulation.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg hit back, saying the latest accusations were at odds with the company’s goals.
In a letter to staff, he said many of the claims were “illogical” and pointed to Facebook’s efforts to fight harmful content.
“We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being, and mental health,” he said in the letter, made public on his Facebook page.
Haugen told CBS News on Sunday that she had shared several internal Facebook documents with the Wall Street Journal in recent weeks.
Using the documents, the WSJ reported that research carried out by Instagram showed the app could harm girls’ mental health.
Bad Influence on Children
She criticized Mark Zuckerberg for having wide-ranging control, saying that there is “no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself.”
And she praised the massive outage of Facebook services on Monday, which affected users around the world.
“Yesterday we saw Facebook taken off the internet,” she said. But he said, “it’s very important to me that everything we build is safe and good for kids”.
Supporting Link
On Monday’s outage, he said the deeper concern was not “how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities”.
Republic and Democratic Agreement
Both Republican and Democratic senators on Tuesday were united in the need for change at the company – a rare topic of agreement between the two political parties.
“The damage to self-interest and self-worth inflicted by Facebook today will haunt a generation,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said.
“Big Tech now faces the Big Tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth,” he added, a reference to how tobacco firms hid the harmful effects of their products.
Fellow Republican Dan Sullivan said the world would look back and ask “What the hell were we thinking?”
Mark’s Discomfit
He argues that the negative internal research has been cherry-picked and positive conclusions brushed over.
Interestingly, he thinks this episode could have a chilling effect on internal research in companies – worried that bad conclusions might one day be leaked.
But there is of course a simple comeback to this. they could let their data be analyzed independently.
To be fair to Facebook, the company does give researchers some access. But it’s been proven over and over again that social media that provoke any emotion, whether it be laughter, love or anger gets more engagement.
Zuckerberg believes passionately that Facebook is a force for good.
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Source: BBC News
