[ Update : Facebook whistle blower Frances Haugen appeared before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday to testify about Facebook policies , and say Mark Zuckerberg is personally responsible for set profit before the mental eudaemonia of children . Read about her testimony hereand hereight SEC complaints here . ]
Last workweek , theWall Street Journalpublished internal inquiry from Facebook show up that the social media company have it away exactly how toxic its own product is for the people who use it . But tonight , we learned how the Journal obtained those documents : A whistle blower named Frances Haugen , who verbalise with CBS News’60 Minutesabout the way Facebook is poisoning society .
The 37 - year - older whistle-blower liberate “ ten of thousands ” of pages of document from Facebook and even project to prove to Congress at some full stop this week . Haugen has filed at least eight complaints with the SEC aver that Facebook has lie to shareholders about its own merchandise .
Screenshot: CBS News/60 Minutes
essentially , Haugen allege there ’s a key conflict between what ’s good for Facebook and what ’s dependable for club at large . At the end of the 24-hour interval , thing that are good for Facebook tend to be high-risk for the globe we live in , fit in to Haugen . We ’ve take out out some of the most interesting tidbits from Sunday ’s interview that highlight this key point .
1) Facebook’s algorithm intentionally shows users things to make them angry
Haugen explain to 60 Minutes how Facebook ’s algorithm chooses subject that ’s probable to make users angry because that do the most conflict . And exploiter fight is what Facebook turns into ad dollars .
“ Its own research is show that content that is hateful , that is divisive , that is polarize , it ’s well-heeled to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotion , ” Haugen told 60 Minutes .
“ Facebook has realized that if they vary the algorithm to be safer , people will spend less prison term on the site , they ’ll select less advertizement , they ’ll make less money , ” Haugen keep .
2) Facebook is worse than most other social media companies
Whenever we talk about social media and the ways it ’s harmed society , a lot of with child Tech companies get lumped in together , whether it ’s Twitter or YouTube or Pinterest . But , grant to Haugen , Facebook is unambiguously awful .
“ I ’ve seen a bunch of social electronic internet and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I ’d see before , ” Haugen told 60 Minutes .
Haugen antecedently puzzle out at Pinterest and Google , and insists that Facebook really is worse than the remainder of Big Tech in substantial ways .
More from Gizmodo : What Would Happen If Mark Zuckerberg Deleted All of Facebook ?
3) Facebook dissolved its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and before the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection
Haugen make for at the so - telephone Civic Integrity unit of Facebook , in tutelage of combating political misinformation on the political program . But the social medium company seemed to think they were in the clear after the U.S. presidential election in November 2020 and that Civic Integrity could be shut down .
“ They told us , ‘ We ’re dissolving Civic Integrity . ’ Like , they basically enunciate , ‘ Oh good , we made it through the election . There was n’t riots . We can get free of Civic Integrity now . ’ tight onward a couple month , we got the rising , ” Haugen say .
It ’s important to recollect that Facebook is n’t just destruct American democracy , it ’s break away forth at democratic institutions all around the world .
4) Political parties in Europe ran negative ads because it was the only way to reach people on Facebook
One of the papers Haugen smuggled out of the company shows that political parties in Europe had to start running negatively charged ads to get any engagement on Facebook .
sum the billet of political parties in Europe , Haugen explained , “ You are forcing us to take position that we do n’t care , that we know are unsound for society . We know if we do n’t take those positions , we wo n’t make headway in the marketplace of social medium . ”
5) Facebook only identifies a tiny fraction of hate and misinformation on the platform
Facebook ’s internal inquiry shows that it identifies roughly ; 3 - 5 % of hate on the chopine and less than 1 % of violence and incitement , harmonize to one of the studies leak by Haugen . And yet Facebook still considers itself to be the best in the world at key hate and incitement on social media .
Facebook takes issue with this characterization , naturally . In fact , the company seems to remember the real problem is the internet itself , at least , according to a instruction the company sent Gizmodo on Sunday dark .
“ If any research had identified an accurate solution to these complex challenges , the technical school diligence , governments , and society would have solve them a long time ago , ” a spokesperson for Facebook told Gizmodo . “ We have a solid track phonograph recording of using our research — as well as international enquiry and close collaboration with experts and organizations — to inform change to our apps . ”
6) Instagram is making kids miserable
Facebook owns Instagram , and as 60 Minutes points out , the documents leaked by Haugen show that 13.5 % of stripling girls say Instagram makes thought of suicide worse , and 17 % say it gain their eating disorders worse .
“ What ’s tiptop tragic is Facebook ’s own enquiry say , as these new womanhood begin to consume this — this eating upset content , they get more and more depressed . And it actually make them use the app more . And so , they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more , ” Haugen differentiate 60 Minutes .
And that ’s all part of the business theoretical account . Facebook is making peck and oodles of money from this miserableness . But Facebook patently has a unlike take .
“ We do internal enquiry to ask punishing questions and find out how we can best better the experience for adolescent and we will go on doing this oeuvre to improve Instagram and all of our apps . It is not exact that leak internal research demonstrate Instagram is ‘ toxic ’ for teen girl , ” Lena Pietsch , Director of Policy Communications , told Gizmodo via email .
“ The research really demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard minute and issues teenagers have always faced . This research , like external enquiry on these issues , institute teenager cover having both positive and negative experience with social sensitive , ” Pietsch keep on .
7) Employees at Facebook aren’t necessarily evil, they just have perverse incentives
Haugen state that the people who exercise at Facebook are n’t bad masses , which seems like the kind of thing someone who previously worked at Facebook might say .
“ No one at Facebook is malevolent , but the incentives are misaligned , right ? ” Haugen insists . “ Like , Facebook makes more money when you consume more content . People relish enlist with thing that elicit an aroused response . And the more anger that they get exposed to , the more they interact and the more they take . ”
And while it ’s easy to see why Haugen might consider “ no one ” at Facebook is malevolent , that ’s quite a bold call at this point . Facebook ’s negative shock on society is n’t exactly a secret here in the 2020s .
Again , Facebook does n’t see it that way .
“ Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits , ” Lena Pietsch told Gizmodo via electronic mail Sunday night . “ To say we rick a blind eye to feedback ignores these investments , including the 40,000 people working on guard and security measure at Facebook and our investing of $ 13 billion since 2016 . ”
8) Haugen even has empathy for Zuck for some stupid reason
“ I have a lot of empathy for Mark . And Mark has never place out to make a mean program . But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effect of those choice are that mean , polarizing cognitive content get more distribution and more reach , ” Haugen told 60 Minutes .
But as Haugen herself said , it does n’t really count whether Zuckerberg set out to make a hateful political program . In realism , he set out to make a website for rating thehotness of women , but that ’s really neither here nor there . What count is how the platform is being used and ill-treat today .
9) Haugen believes she’s covered by whistleblower laws, but we’ll see
When 60 Minutes talked with Haugen ’s lawyer , John Tye , who works with whistleblowers , we hear about how the law protects hoi polloi who verbalize with the SEC .
“ The Dodd - Frank Act , passed over ten year ago at this point , created an Office of the Whistleblower inside the SEC . And one of the provisions of that police force says that no company can veto its employees from communicating with the SEC and sharing interior corporate documents with the SEC , ” Tye told 60 second .
And while Dodd - Frank hypothetically protects employee babble with the SEC , it does n’t needfully protect people talk with diarist and direct 1000 of varlet of documents . But we ’re give out to find out pretty quickly just how much trade protection whistle blower actually get in the U.S. Historically , have ’s just say the answer has been “ not much . ”
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