Whistleblower testimony and Facebook Papers trigger lawmaker calls for regulatio...
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Facebook continued to face searing criticism on Monday, as whistleblower Frances Haugen providing blistering testimony to U.K. lawmakers, stirring global momentum to regulate the social media giant.
In the first of a series of scheduled visits to European capitals, Haugen, who left Facebook in May armed with tens of thousands of pages of internal documents, spoke to the British parliamentary committee charged with drafting new legislation to tackle harmful online content.
Haugen told British lawmakers the easiest way to grow an audience on Facebook is by using “anger and hate.” She added, “The current system is biased towards bad actors, and people who push people to the extremes.”
U.S. lawmakers also criticized the social media giant over the litany of social harms outlined in the tens of thousands of documents the whistleblower took from Facebook, which resulted in a wave of stories by news organizations showing how the social media giant has privately and meticulously tracked real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms and ignored warnings from its employees about the risks of design decisions.
Facebook reported earnings late Monday, and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took the opportunity to fight back against the criticism, defending the company’s reputation before spending the bulk of the investor call talking about the company’s major investments in virtual reality and hardware.
He called the stories being published by news organizations a “coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” and spoke about how the media is treating deeply considered trade-offs between free speech and harm too glibly.
“It makes a good sound bite that we don’t solve this impossible trade-off because we are just focused on making money,” he said.
The trove of documents have triggered arguably the biggest crisis in the company’s 17-year history, and have added renewed urgency to a global debate about how to rein in the largely unregulated and enormously powerful technology industry. The documents include revelations that Facebook knew its software algorithms fuel increased polarization, hateful speech and misinformation, and were damaging to the mental health of some teenage girls.
The documents were disclosures made by Haugen’s legal counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form as well as to a consortium of news organizations, including The Washington Post. Some of them were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Haugen called for expansive and ambitious regulation as she launched a blistering critique of her former employer, accusing it of putting profits ahead of people, stoking division and harming children. Zuckerberg has described her account as “just not true.”
The news stories — as well as Haugen’s testimony — have triggered a call for legislative action in light of the Facebook revelations, as U.S. lawmakers and those abroad reiterated their commitments over the past few years to investigate Big Tech.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement that the documents show that Facebook’s leadership “chronically ignored serious internal alarms, choosing to put profits over people,” and added that the company is “obviously unable to police itself.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called for the creation of a new federal agency to protect people’s personal data and ensure privacy as more daily activities move online, she wrote in an op-ed published online by NBC News.
Gillibrand has created legislation that would form the agency, which she proposes calling the Data Protection Agency.
“The approach companies like Facebook take to data is motivated not by protecting our privacy but by growing their profit and power,” the senator wrote.
The agency would be able to review “high-risk” data practices, address people’s privacy complaints and write new rules for data privacy, she said.
Congress will continue probing tech companies this week, with a hearing on Tuesday about kids’ safety online with testimony from representatives of Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.
But legislative efforts in both the United Kingdom and the European Union are further along, with draft bills in both countries expected to come into law sometime in the first half of next year. Britain’s will introduce independent regulation for the digital world and enforce consumer protection measures.
“Frances Haugen has a lot of useful and important insights for any country that is looking to make a proper regulatory regime for big tech,” said Damian Collins, a British member of Parliament and chair of the joint committee on the Online Safety Bill. He described such legislation as “overdue.”
With Britain likely to become the first country to introduce such a framework, “it’s important to get it right,” he said. Sophie Zhang, another whistleblower who formerly worked for Facebook combating “inauthentic activity” on the site, spoke to the same committee earlier this month.
The debate in Britain surrounding online safety has become particularly emotionally charged in the wake of the murder of David Amess, a member of Parliament who was stabbed multiple times as he met with constituents earlier this month in the district he represented.
While police are still investigating the motive in Amess’s killing, the murder has triggered debate over online abuse aimed at public figures, including members of Parliament. The 69-year-old Conservative Party politician had voiced concerns about anonymous online abuse he had received before he died, calling for tougher laws.
Speaking to British lawmakers last week, Parliament member Mark Francois of the Conservative Party had said that he would like to “drag” Zuckerberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dawsey to Parliament’s bar, “if necessary kicking and screaming, so they can look us all in the eye and account for their actions, or rather their inactions, that make them even richer than they already are.”
In its current form, Britain’s online safety bill intends to extend the remit of Ofcom, the independent regulator that oversees television and radio, to include Internet content. It provides a legislative framework to ensure that tech companies act with a “duty of care” to protect their users from harm, and threatens fines of up to $24.7 million, or 10 percent of global profits, for breaches.
The European Union is also in the process of drawing up two pieces of legislation intended to strengthen rules for the digital sphere. Even as it does, Facebook has announced ambitious plans on the continent, last week announcing 10,000 new jobs in the E.U. to build its “metaverse” — what it bills as connected online worlds.
“The need for regulation has definitely strengthened,” said Alexandra Geese, a member of the European Parliament who spoke with Haugen before her identity was revealed. Haugen is expected to speak to lawmakers in Brussels on Nov. 8.
Geese said the revelations with the most impact had included details of a two-tiered world within Facebook, in which some high-profile users including politicians and celebrities are shielded from the site’s rules in a system known as “XCheck.”
“Now to have it in black and white with all the evidence does make a difference and it does have an influence,” Geese said, adding that Europe’s Digital Services Act needs to include obligations for nondiscriminatory universal terms and conditions.
Christel Schaldemose, the lawmaker charged with steering the new legislation through the European Parliament, said that she had spoken with Haugen before she had gone public and that the whistleblower’s message to her had been clear: “Regulate, please regulate.”
She said that she “really hoped” that Haugen’s testimony in Brussels would have an effect on lawmakers who have been less willing to back more stringent regulation.
“I think it will have an impact, and I hope it will have an impact,” she said.
Facebook itself has repeatedly called for updated regulation of the decades-old U.S. law that gives the technology industry immunity from prosecution for harms that take place on its services. The company has also funded an independent Oversight Board, made up of outside experts in free speech, to take on its thorniest content decisions in what Zuckerberg called a “model for self-regulation” on Monday’s earnings call.
The revelations did not appear to affect the company’s profits or stock price, and investors did not ask about them during the call. Facebook’s stock has been down 15 percent since a peak in September, but it is unclear whether the drop is due to the new public scrutiny or other factors.
The company said it would begin to report out earnings next quarter for its hardware division, Facebook Reality Labs, in which it has been heavily investing.
The company is also reportedly considering changing its name to reflect the new focus on virtual reality, hardware and the “metaverse” — a concept Zuckerberg has used to describe how all the services owned by his conglomerate would connect to one another.
Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.
Zuckerberg uses earnings call to defend Facebook
Return to menuBefore diving into Facebook’s future as a virtual reality company, Zuckerberg took a moment to double down on the company’s attacks on whistleblower Frances Haugen’s effort to bring tens of thousands of company documents to light — and the journalists reporting on those documents.
Zuckerberg intimated that the effort to use the documents — which demonstrate how the company was aware of harms caused by its platform — was in bad faith.
“My view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” he said.
He also reflected on Facebook’s struggles balancing free speech and harm, and said that the company has invested in studying all of its problems, including hiring 40,000 people to work in safety and security, precisely because “we care about getting this right.”
He said that in some senses the leaks were a consequence of Facebook’s open culture, which includes enabling rank-and-file employees, researchers and data scientists, to publish and discuss their findings on the company’s internal chat system, a Facebook look-alike system called Workplace.
“It makes a good sound bite that we don’t solve this impossible trade-off because we are just focused on making money,” he said.
Zuckerberg says the company is refocusing on young people
Return to menuStep aside, boomers. Facebook is going to refocus its service on young people, Zuckerberg said in its quarterly earnings call on Monday.
“We’re retooling our teams to make serving young adults their north star, rather than optimizing for the larger number of older people,” he said.
This is going to be a major shift for Facebook, but one that is already underway behind the scenes. For years, Facebook has been aware that it’s losing its younger audience to services like TikTok, which Zuckerberg called one of the “most effective competitors we have ever faced.”
He said that now Facebook’s teams would be given specific goals to increase the number of people and the engagement from people ages 18 to 29 on the service. He said that would mean trade-offs for older users, who are some of the most active users today on Facebook’s main services.
Haugen offers recommendations after ‘powerful, wild, and overwhelming’ month
Return to menuWhistleblower Frances Haugen acknowledged her “powerful, wild, and overwhelming experience” over the past month in a short tweet thread Monday, thanking her supporters for their encouragement.
She offered three recommendations, which she has emphasized in previous interviews and testimony, as starting spots for lawmakers, advocates and observers.
People need to demand transparency from Facebook, and reckon “with the dangers” that engagement-based ranking brings and tools “other than censorship” to keep the world safe online, she wrote.
Haugen burst from anonymity to one of the most famous tech whistleblowers of all time during the past several weeks after she publicly revealed herself as the source of tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents, now known as the Facebook Papers.
Haugen has already testified in front of the U.S. Congress and U.K. Parliament and said Monday that she plans to share further insights into the documents and her time at Facebook on Twitter going forward.
Racial justice advocacy groups call for Zuckerberg to step down
Return to menuSeveral organizations that advocate for racial justice causes in technology called for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to resign on Monday, pointing to the unveiling of internal documents that suggested the company removed less hate speech than it previously reported.
Kairos, 18 Million Rising, MediaJustice, the Action Center on Race and the Economy, and US Campaign for Palestinian Rights said in a joint statement that internal documents show Facebook’s leaders will “continue to sacrifice the safety of our communities to line their pockets.”
The group of racial justice organizations are also urging people to log off Facebook on Nov. 10 to make a statement to the company.
“For too long, Facebook has operated with unprecedented immunity from meaningful oversight and, as a result, has continued to prime the spigot of hate content from extremist groups on Black and other marginalized communities, both domestically and abroad,” they wrote.
Why it’s so hard to quit Facebook, and how to do it anyway
Return to menuFacebook says it has nearly 3 billion users around the world. But with the latest onslaught of negative news coming out about the company, at least some of those people are again wondering whether it’s time to leave.
Breaking up with Facebook is difficult, and that’s by design. Leaving the company entirely means also quitting its other products, Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp. In some countries, where the Facebook Free Basics program is popular, it can even mean giving up free access to the Internet. And because Facebook has spent years persuading people to build their social lives on its services, it now owns the primary way they reach many of their contacts.
To actually leave Facebook behind, the first step is to rebuild your network someplace you own it, like your address book. You can start by extracting your friend lists from Facebook and Instagram, but those will usually only include a name, no contact information. The next step is manually getting phone numbers or email addresses for anyone you don’t want to lose contact with — try just asking in a post. If you want to sign up for other messaging apps or social networks, do it before deleting Facebook so you can connect the two accounts to find Facebook friends on there.
The next big question is figuring out where to go next. There’s no exact Facebook replica, so you might have to find multiple new homes.
Facebook to start sharing how much its virtual reality division earns
Return to menuIn another sign of the company’s growing emphasis on hardware, Facebook said Monday that next quarter it will start reporting how much its virtual reality and hardware division, known as Facebook Reality Labs, earns for the company.
The company also disclosed that it would expect its investment in its reality lab division to reduce its overall operating profits for 2021 by about $10 billion — a figure that will also be reflected in its earnings report next quarter.
The reality division, the company told investors in its third-quarter 2021 earnings report, will produce hardware for augmented reality, but also software and content. The company’s other services, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, will have their revenue grouped together and reported separately.
In September, Facebook announced that it was releasing smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban. It also launched an initiative focused on using virtual reality at work.
Facebook is still making loads of money, but slightly missed analyst estimates
Return to menuA fresh round of controversy over newly released internal documents by whistleblower France Haugen appeared to have little impact on Facebook’s financial performance.
Facebook earned revenue of $29 billion in the third quarter of this year — slightly missing analyst expectations of $29.6 billion dollars.
Though Facebook’s revenue are 35 percent greater than they were the same quarter the previous year, it is uncommon for Facebook not to exceed analyst estimates.
The company’s stock price has been down roughly 15 percent since a peak in September.
Young women and girls steel themselves against Instagram’s recommended content
Return to menuIt’s up to parents to help teens recognize what Common Sense Media CEO and founder Jim Steyer calls a “comparative culture” on Instagram — we hold ourselves up to other people’s best pictures and moments and find ourselves lacking.
But most of the time, teens say, these idealized images aren’t even coming from the friends and family they follow on the app. They’re coming from Instagram itself in the form of “recommended” content in the main photo feed and the explore tab, a personalized landing page and search bar accessed through the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the app.
Rather than effectively reining in harmful recommended content, Instagram owner Facebook has doubled down on its algorithm that spits out posts based on what’s most likely to get a reaction, critics say.
In September, Facebook paused plans for an Instagram app designed especially for children after lawmakers voiced concerns about the app’s effects on young people’s mental health. Facebook whistleblower Haugen leaked internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and the Securities and Exchange Commission that suggested the company knew that the use of Instagram may hurt the mental health of young women and girls. She testified in front of a Senate committee, saying Facebook put growth and profit above anything else. Facebook has fought back, denying the claims.
Facebook stock edges up as Wall Street appears to shrug off new reports
Return to menuJust before the release of Facebook’s quarterly financial results, investors seemed to be holding fast despite the torrent of news detailing the company’s role in exacerbating real-world harms and exposing vulnerable communities to dangerous content.
Shares closed at $328.69, up 1.3 percent, on Monday — edging higher even as Haugen outlined for members of Parliament the harm that can flow from a global platform that relies on impassioned engagement to flourish. And she described how executives failed to hold themselves and the company accountable for worsening political and cultural conflicts.
The company’s share price has faced some pressure, however, as regulatory scrutiny mounts. It has pulled back from an all-time high hit in early September, when shares closed in on $400. Since then, lawmakers have launched probes into the company’s conduct in the wake of reports by the Wall Street Journal.
But even the new wave of news reports that coincided with and amplified Haugen’s testimony did not seem to immediately discourage investors. Although Facebook dropped 5 percent Friday — as Snap projected slowing growth because of Apple’s recent changes to its App Store privacy rules, sending other ad-dependent tech companies tumbling — the social media platform’s shares are still up about 20 percent this year. Wall Street values the company at nearly $927 billion.
Gillibrand calls for creation of federal agency to protect personal data
Return to menuSen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called for the creation of a new federal agency — separate from the Federal Trade Commission — to protect people’s personal data and ensure privacy as more daily activities move online.
Gillibrand has created legislation that would form the agency, which she proposes calling the Data Protection Agency.
“The government’s regulation and enforcement capabilities have not kept pace as algorithms have evolved and data collection has grown from simple cookie tracking to extensive surveillance of individuals and communities,” she wrote in an op-ed published on NBC News’s website on Monday.
The Facebook documents prove that government action is needed, she wrote. Whistleblower Haugen called for such an agency to pull from expertise from people who have worked within Big Tech companies. Gillibrand agrees.
“The approach companies like Facebook take to data is motivated not by protecting our privacy but by growing their profit and power,” the senator wrote.
The agency would be able to review “high-risk” data practices, address people’s privacy complaints and write new rules for data privacy, she said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal says Facebook’s ‘destructive, tragic damage’ cries out for legislative action
Return to menuSen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tweeted that Mark Zuckerberg did not pass the “red face test” regarding comments the Facebook founder has made about wanting increased regulation and transparency within the tech industry.
“Facebook has fiercely fought releasing its own researchers‘ findings & recommendations, my Earn It Act to responsibly reform Sec. 230, kid’s protection, privacy safeguards, & more,” Blumenthal wrote Monday after a news consortium published stories based on internal documents that showed failings and fractures within the social media giant.
Later Monday, Blumenthal issued a statement saying the documents show that Facebook’s leadership “chronically ignored serious internal alarms, choosing to put profits over people.”
“Facebook is obviously unable to police itself as its powerful algorithms drive deeply harmful content to children and fuel hate,” he said.
Over the weekend, Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee, linked to The Post’s report examining Facebook’s role in fomenting the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol.
“More bombshell evidence,” Blumenthal wrote. “Facebook’s failure to police itself — causing destructive, tragic damage — cries out for action. Our ongoing subcommittee hearings, focusing on Big Tech’s devastating harms, will continue Tuesday, aiming for bold legislative steps.”
The hearing will feature testimony from YouTube, Snap and TikTok executives.
Facebook has defended itself against allegations made by the papers, including denying that decisions made by Zuckerberg “cause harm.”
Facebook removes video in which Brazil’s Bolsonaro links coronavirus vaccines with AIDS
Return to menuSAO PAULO, Brazil — Facebook removed a video in which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro falsely associated coronavirus vaccines with the onset of AIDS, putting the social media giant at the center of the nation’s explosive debate over misinformation.
Bolsonaro, a coronavirus skeptic, has often used his Facebook Live dispatches to communicate with his most ardent supporters, spread misinformation about the virus and undermine attempts to curb its spread. Many here have been calling on the platform to take down such videos, which Facebook did for the first time Sunday.
In a statement Monday, Facebook said that Bolsonaro’s statements didn’t comply with its policy prohibiting false claims describing the coronavirus vaccines as either deadly or seriously harmful.
During the Thursday night transmission, Bolsonaro said reports from the United Kingdom suggested that “vaccinated people are developing the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.” U.K. health officials afterward told the Brazilian news outlet G1 that the statements were false.
Brazil has spent years mired in debate over freedom of expression and misinformation, spurring national investigations that have led to the arrests of several Bolsonaro supporters. The Brazilian president, meanwhile, has characterized the inquiries as political persecution.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar: ‘Facebook knew’ its platform hurts communities
Return to menuSen. Amy Klobuchar on Monday called for regulation of tech giants in response to revelations in the Facebook Papers, saying they underscore the extent to which the social network placed profits over people.
“There’s a lot to discover in these papers about how the platform promotes extremism and hurts our communities,” the Minnesota Democrat said in a statement, “but here’s what is clear: Facebook knew.”
Klobuchar, chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, said lawmakers need to revisit laws and hold tech giants accountable when they blast harmful content and “disinformation” to “vulnerable users.” She called for updates to competition laws, after introducing bipartisan legislation earlier this month that would prohibit tech companies from giving their own products a boost over those of rivals.
She also called for federal privacy legislation, as well as regulation that would ensure algorithms aren’t promoting dangerous content.
‘Anger and hate is the easiest way to grow on Facebook,’ Haugen testifies
Return to menuThe easiest way to grow on Facebook is by using “anger and hate,” Haugen told British lawmakers, in stinging testimony Monday about her former employer.
She said she had seen a lot of research that Facebook “fans hate” because of the way its algorithm works. “Bad actors have an incentive to play the algorithm,” she said. “The current system is biased towards bad actors, and people who push people to the extremes.”
Her comments resonated with members of the parliamentary committee drafting the nation’s online safety legislation. John Nicolson of the Scottish National Party called her comments “chilling.”
“I mean that’s shocking, isn’t it?” he said. “What a horrendous insight into contemporary society on social media that that should be the case.”
Another lawmaker asked Haugen whether she thought that was by accident or design.
“I don’t think they set out to accomplish these things, but they have been negligent in not responding to the data,” she said. “There is a large number of data scientists internally who have been raising these issues for years.”
The solutions Facebook has implemented, including removing some of the most dangerous terms from engagement-based ranking, do not sufficiently cover some of the “most vulnerable places in the world” due to language issues, she said.
“If we believe in linguistic diversity, the current design of the platform is dangerous,” she added.
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