Facebook whistleblower - Haugen called ‘21st century hero’ by Senate as Zuckerberg told toxic time is up

Ms Haugen says she stands with Facebook’s researchers.

“Some of the biggest heroes inside the company are the researchers,” she says, adding that the fact that Facebook is “throwing them under the bus” is unacceptable.

Children are a big focus of the hearing today and what impact social media will have on them in the future.

Ms Haugen is especially concerned. She warns about a “scary future” for children and their relationships if they grow up without a feedback loop of seeing a person’s reaction when you say something to them in person, versus through the internet with no immediate response or consequences.

“They learn to be incredibly cruel to each other,” she says.

Further to that, children feel they cannot stop for fear of being ostracised.

When asked how Facebook can be compared to big tobacco in its efforts to hook young people, Ms Haugen says that there are little “dopamine hits” delivered by getting likes and comments on posts on social media and that they are scared of being disconnected from their friends and peers and that they may miss out.

Facebook’s own research on Instagram included quotes from children saying that they feel bad when they use Instagram but they can’t stop, she told the subcommittee.

Senator Blumenthal closes the hearing by reading out an emotional text he received from a constituent in Connecticut who says he is “in tears” watching Ms Haugen’s testimony.

He writes that his daughter developed severe anorexia following extensive use of Instagram.

“I fear she will never be the same.”

Ms Haugen testified: “Facebook knows that the people who are mostly exposed to most misinformation are people who are recently widowed, divorced, move to a new city, and isolated in some other way.”

One of the proposals for reforming and regulating the social media environment that has been floated on both sides of the Atlantic is for Facebook — and other tech giants — to be broken up.

Facebook is often singled out for its failure to deal with misinformation, privacy issues, and its track record of buying up or copying smaller rivals.

Ms Haugen believes that dissolved the social media behemoth will do little to deal with these concerns as the underlying problem will still be the algorithms and engagement-based ranking of newsfeeds as she described several times in her testimony.

“What I’m scared of is that Facebook is the internet for lots of the world. If you go to Africa, the internet is Facebook. If you split Facebook and Instagram apart, it’s likely that most advertising dollars would go to Instagram and Facebook will continue to be this Frankenstein that is endangering lives around the world. Only now there won’t be money [from advertisers] to fund it.”

This she argued would make it harder to deal with problems based on what people see in newsfeeds as there are limits on what artificial intelligence can address in terms of problematic content.

“These systems are going to continue to exist and be dangerous even if broken up,” she argued, suggesting a more collaborative approach would be more effective.

Lawmakers have floated scrapping or reforming part of a piece of legislation — the 1996 Communications Decency Act, specifically Section 230 — as one way of forcing big tech companies to take a tougher stance towards moderating content on their platforms.

Here’s a short explainer from the AP about the rule that made the modern internet.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of putting “profits over people” despite allegedly knowing that his site is harming children and societies in general around the world during Senate testimony.

She and senators at the hearing on Monday laid blame for issues stemming from the site at Mr Zuckerberg’s feet, with Ms Haugen declaring: “The buck stops with Mark. There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself.”

John Bowden reports for The Independent from Washington, DC.