Facebook accused of being ‘morally bankrupt’ at whistleblower Frances Haugen Senate hearing
Whistleblower Frances Haugen is testifying against Facebook before the US Senate, and has accused the firm of putting “astronomical profits before people” and said it “harms children.”
Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, began her testimony by saying: “I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.”
During the committee hearing, Senator Blumenthal, the chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, said Facebook was “morally bankrupt” and was now facing “a moment of reckoning.”
He went on to draw parallels between the social media giant’s prioritisation of growth and the long-running campaign by Big Tobacco companies in the past to hide the harmful effects of cigarettes from the public.
In the weeks leading up to the hearing, the Wall Street Journal has been publishing a series of documents and internal memos leaked by Haugen, dubbed the ‘Facebook Files’, that reveal the social media giant knew how its platform harmed users.
At the opening of today’s hearing, Haugen explained that she leaked the documents because they proved that Facebook had “repeatedly misled the public” about the platform’s spread of divisive and extreme messages, the safety of children, and the accuracy of its artificial intelligence systems.
She said that people deserve to know the truth, and that “almost no one outside of Facebook knows what is happening inside.”
Amongst the leaked documents, Haugen pointed towards Facebook’s own studies that show how easily its algorithms can lead children from harmful content like recipes to things like anorexia-promoting posts over a very short period of time.
The social media giant’s own research showed that more than 6 per cent of children admit that they are so addicted to Instagram that it is “materially harming” their school work, mental and physical health – although Haugen believes the actual number is probably higher.
When Senator Roger Wicker probed Haugen by saying “the children of America are hooked” on Facebook’s apps, she alluded to how the firm wants to preserve some level of addiction to drive growth.
“Facebook understands that if they want to continue to grow, they have to make sure the next generation is just as engaged as the current one,” Haugen said.
“The way that they’ll do that is by making sure they have the same habits – by keeping them hooked.”
A key theme throughout Haugen’s testimony was her belief that the AI tools Facebook currently uses to sift harmful content are inadequate, and should be combined with human oversight.
Facebook is “focused on scale over safety,” Haugen said.
“It’s using AI to identify harmful ads, without using human oversight to measure the effectiveness of those safety systems,” she continued.
Facebook has begun to hit back at the testimony in real-time, and head of comms Andy Stone tweeted that Haugen has “no direct knowledge” of child safety or Instagram.
And he has been persistent on this point, repeating it with two subsequent tweets:
And finally: