Facebook whistleblower says transparency wanted to repair social media ills

Haugen, a former product supervisor at Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook, spoke on the Reuters Next convention on Friday. She left the corporate in May with hundreds of inside paperwork which she leaked to the Wall Street Journal.
That led to a sequence of articles in September detailing how the corporate knew its apps helped unfold divisive content material and harmed the psychological well being of some younger customers.

Facebook additionally knew it had too few employees with the required language abilities to determine objectionable posts from customers in quite a few growing nations, in response to the interior paperwork and Reuters interviews with former workers.
People who use the platform in languages aside from English are utilizing a “raw, dangerous version of Facebook,” Haugen mentioned.
Facebook has persistently mentioned it disagrees with Haugen’s characterisation of the interior analysis and that it’s pleased with the work it has finished to cease abuse on the platform. Haugen mentioned the corporate ought to be required to reveal which languages are supported by its tech security methods, in any other case “Facebook will do … the bare minimum to minimise PR risk,” she mentioned.
The inside Facebook paperwork made public by Haugen have additionally raised contemporary considerations about the way it could have didn’t take actions to forestall the unfold of deceptive info. Haugen mentioned the social media firm knew it might introduce “strategic friction” to make customers decelerate earlier than resharing posts, akin to requiring customers to click on a hyperlink earlier than they have been capable of share the content material. But she mentioned the corporate prevented taking such actions to be able to protect revenue.
Such measures to immediate customers to rethink sharing sure content material might be useful provided that permitting tech platforms or governments to find out what info is true poses many dangers, in response to web and authorized specialists who spoke throughout a separate panel on the Reuters Next convention on Friday.
“In regulating speech, you’re handing states the power to manipulate speech for their own purposes,” mentioned David Greene, civil liberties director on the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The paperwork made public by Haugen have led to a sequence of US congressional hearings. Adam Mosseri, head of Meta Platforms’ Instagram app, will testify subsequent week on the app’s impact on younger folks. Asked what she would say to Mosseri given the chance, Haugen mentioned she would query why the corporate has not launched extra of its inside analysis.
“We have evidence now that Facebook has known for years that it was harming kids,” she mentioned. “How are we supposed to trust you going forward?”