"The way that they pick the content in Instagram for young users, for all users, amplifies preferences, and they have done something called a proactive incident response where they take things that they've heard for example like can you be led by the algorithms to anorexia content, and they have literally recreated that experiment themselves and confirmed. Yes, this, this happens to people," she told Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. "So Facebook knows that they, that they are leading young users to anorexia content."
Facebook needs legislation to provide oversight, otherwise it will never put aside engagement-based rankings, she said. Otherwise, "Facebook is going to say ... you're not gonna like Facebook as much, if we're not picking out the content for you," Haugen said.
Without the algorithm, users might not engage as much. As the platforms stand, "we spend more time on their platform (and) they make more money," she said.
"They know that other people will produce more content, if they get the likes and comments and ratios, they prioritize content in your feed, so that you will give little hits of dopamine to your friends, so they will create more content, and they've run experiments on people producer-side experiments where they have confirmed (this)," Haugen said.
That could help prevent the viral spread of misinformation and content that results in violent incidents such as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and repressive actions in Myanmar and Ethiopia, she said.
"I think the moment which I realized we needed to get help from the outside … that the only way these problems would be solved is by solving them together, not solving them alone, was when civic integrity was dissolved, following the 2020 election," Haugen said. "It really felt like a betrayal of the promises that Facebook had made to people who had sacrificed a great deal to keep the election safe by basically dissolving, our community and integrate and just other parts of the company."
The latest series of reports by the Wall Street Journal exposing a range of malpractices by the tech giant, lawmakers are rallying to regulate the company, a call that has been issued many times before.
“Here’s my message for Mark Zuckerberg: Your time of invading our private, promoting toxic content and preying on children and teens is over. Congress will be taking action,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in remarks during the Senate hearing.
“You can work with us or not work with us, but we will not allow your company to harm our children and our families and our democracy any longer,” the senator continued. “We will act."
Facebook is among a cadre of Big Tech companies that have come under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers across the globe as their influence and power have become more apparent.
While Washington has been slow to act on issues including antitrust, privacy, data portability and algorithmic bias among technology giants, regulators in the European Union have passed laws cracking down on Big Tech companies including Amazon, Alphabet, Apple and Facebook.
California lawmakers have also enacted policies targeting Big Tech from Sacramento on issues like privacy and taxation. The laws are considered by many industry watchers as a potential blueprint for if and when Washington finally moves on the issue.
On Tuesday, Markey and other lawmakers blamed Washington’s inaction on lobbying from the technology industry.
"We have not done anything to update our privacy laws in this country,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., lamented during the hearing, “because there are lobbyists around every single corner of this building that have been hired by the tech industry."
Haugen, the whistleblower, argued that any regulation of social media should also include a specified regulatory agency that has people well-versed in the technology because most people who best understand the underlying technology already work in the technology industry.
– Matthew Brown
Children's advocacy groups and some in Congress called on Facebook earlier this year to stop its work on a planned kids version of its social media app. But when Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, asked Haugen about the project, she doubted that work had stopped.
"I would be sincerely surprised if they do not continue working on Instagram kKds, and I would be amazed if a year from now we don't have this conversation again," she responded.
Haugen said Facebook had a need to ensure the "next generation is just as engaged" with Instagram. "And the way they'll do that is by making sure that children establish habits before they have good self regulation."
"By hooking kids?" Schatz asked.
Haugen: "By hooking kids."
She went on to note the research she had provided showed that "problematic use" of social media peaked at age 14.
"It's just like cigarettes. Teenagers don't have good self-regulation," she said. "They say explicitly, 'I feel bad when I use Instagram and yet I can't stop'."
– Mike Snider
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen discussed how the company's use of its algorithms to boost engagement leads to dangerous levels of violence and conflict around the world, something the company does not avoid because it would harm profits.
Haugen said Facebook needed to be “less twitchy, less reactive, less viral" as it develops products if it is going to avert the worst effects for individuals and society.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked Haugen about Facebook’s role in the 2020 election, during which the company briefly throttled engagement-boosting algorithms for American users ahead of the presidential voting.
“It seems that Facebook invests more in users who make them more money, even though the danger may not be evenly distributed based on profitability,” Haugen told Klobuchar.
“Facebook is presenting a false choice,” Haugen repeated, arguing that the company seeks profit through increased engagement at any cost. She said one of the major avenues for this, the engagement-based ranking of posts on Facebook and Instagram, is especially damaging.
“The choices that were happening on the platform was how reactive and twichty was the platform, how viral was the platform, and Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous,” Haugen told lawmakers.
“And because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults. And the fact that they had to break the glass on Jan. 6 and turn them back on, I think that’s deeply problematic.”
– Matthew Brown
In answering questions from Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said there is no one at the company holding its cofounder accountable.
"The buck stops with Mark," she said.
Facebook's corporate strategy has led to its current trials, she added.
"The metrics make the decision. Unfortunately that in itself is a decision and in the end, (Zuckerberg) is the CEO and the chairman of Facebook, he is responsible for those decisions," she said.
After Blumenthal called Zuckerberg "the algorithm designer in chief," Haugen described how the CEO and chairman's management style has led to a troublesome cycle.
"Facebook has struggled for a long time to recruit and retain the number of employees in needs to tackle the large scope of projects it has chosen to take on," she said. "That causes it to understaff projects, which causes scandals, which then makes it harder to hire."
That is why the company, "needs to come out and say, 'We did something wrong. We made some choices that we regret,' she said. "The only way we can move forward and heal Facebook is we first have to admit the truth."
– Mike Snider
In her opening remarks, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen recounted her experience at Facebook and pleaded with lawmakers to tackle the tech giant's behavior head on.
“The choice being made at Facebook are disastrous,” Haugen said in her opening remarks, adding that many of the decisions made through its business practices and products have “led to actual violence that harms and even kills people.”
Haugen highlighted instances of radicalization on Facebook’s platforms around the world, including mob violence and genocides in many countries like Myanmar and Ethiopia.
She said the company was fully aware of its platforms’ effects on people, especially children. “This is about Facebook choosing to grow at all costs,” Haugen said.
“Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside of Facebook,” Haugen said, comparing the company’s opacity to other tech giants like Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube.
Haugen said Facebook “intentionally hides” its inner workings from the American public and governments around the world in an effort to hide the effects of its company.
“Until the invectives change, Facebook will not change. Left alone, Facebook will continue to make choices against the common good. Our common good,” she said.
Haugen called on lawmakers to intervene in the situation and reign in the social media company’s behavior, comparing Facebook's behavior to that of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries avoiding accountability in the past.
Haugen said that because of the black box nature of Facebook’s algorithms, the government and the public are left to judge the company’s algorithms by their end result, which is less effective than seeing the technology from the inside.
“A safer, free speech respecting social media is possible,” Haugen said, arguing that the many revelations about the company “are only the first chapters in a story so terrifying, no one wants. To read the end of it.”
– Matthew Brown
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., charged that Facebook continues to put profit ahead of the safety of the children and teen users on its platform – a bipartisan issue that could unite legislators against the tech giant.
She cited research provided by Facebook after Haugen's revelations, which found 66% of teen girls and 40% of teen boys on Instagram experienced negative social comparisons. Another finding: 52% of teen girls who experienced negative social comparison on Instagram said it was caused by images related to beauty.
"Social comparison is worse on Instagram because it is perceived as real life, but based on celebrity standards," Blackburn said.
The resulting social media consumption cycle can lead to "a downward emotional spiral encompassing a range of emotions from jealousy to self-proclaimed body dysmorphia," Blackburn said.
Facebook also accepts that users can become addicted, Blackburn said, using a term it "calls conveniently 'problematic use,'" which is "most severe in teens peaking at age 14."
"Big tech companies have gotten away with abusing consumers for far too long," Blackburn said. "It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of our children and all users."
– Mike Snider
As lawmakers and the public again train their attention on Facebook amid its most damaging scandal in years, the company’s top executives are silent.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is absent from the national spotlight. The company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is also missing in action.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has said he will call on Zuckerberg to testify about the latest reports on the company’s internal research. Facebook has not yet issued a statement on whether he would testify before Congress.
Since the latest reports from the Wall Street Journal, the company’s vice president for global affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, has been the main spokesperson for the company, pushing back on the latest reports.
Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, has also made media appearances since the latest revelations, including announcing that the company would halt work on its Instagram Kids project amid public backlash.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg’s absence from the public eye mirrors past major crises for the company, including the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal.
– Matthew Brown
The social network and the Facebook-owned platforms stopped working around 11:30 a.m. EDT Monday, according to the site Downdetector.com. At around 5:40 p.m., some users were able to access the platforms, but not all functions were back.
Facebook said late Monday that “the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change” and that there was “no evidence that user data was compromised as a result.”
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