Whistleblower Frances Haugen calls Facebook danger to children and democracy

She said it knows its algorithms are harmful but puts "profits before people."

A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday heard from a whistleblower who claims Facebook manipulated content it knew was harmful to young users, a day after the social media giant experienced an apparently unrelated massive outage.

Frances Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS' "60 Minutes," has been cooperating with a Senate Commerce subcommittee as part of its ongoing efforts to assess potential regulation of the platform. Haugen told lawmakers on Tuesday about documentation she said show the company -- and CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- intentionally ignored proof of its potentially harmful impact on users.

Facebook has publicly disputed Haugen's claims.


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Facebook responds to whistleblower by live-tweeting hearing

Facebook said communications staffer Andy Stone would live-tweet through the Senate hearing to respond to Frances Haugen's testimony.

"Just pointing out the fact that @FrancesHaugen did not work on child safety or Instagram or research these issues and has no direct knowledge of the topic from her work at Facebook," he tweeted. "As she herself just said under oath, 'I don't work on it.'"

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., had asked if teenagers are some of Facebook's most profitable users.

"I'm sure they are some of the more profitable users on Facebook, but I do not work directly on them," Haugen said.

Facebook also pointed to a May op-ed in CNBC from Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president of global affairs, calling for "bipartisan approach on internet regulation."

But lawmakers from both parties on Tuesday, in a normally divided Washington, were united in blasting the social media giant after they said internal documents Haugen presented to them showed Facebook ignored its own evidence that it harms young users and fuels hate speech. Haugen also alleged CEO Mark Zuckerberg had the opportunity to intervene but dismissed the concern.


Whisteblower alleges employee bonuses tied to system driving hate speech

Using Ethiopia as an example, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told lawmakers the company is "pulling families apart" and fueling "ethnic tensions" as the platform's news feed ranking algorithm, via "meaningful social interactions" or MSIs, elevates polarizing content.

She said she has submitted documents to Congress showing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was presented with "soft intervention options" to MSIs in April 2021 and chose not to add features to intervene.

"Facebook's own algorithms are bad at finding this content. It's still in the raw form for 80, 90% of even that sensitive content," she said. "In countries where they don't have integrity systems in the language local language, and in the case of Ethiopia, there are 100 million people in Ethiopia and six languages -- Facebook only supports two of those languages for integrity systems."

“This strategy of focusing on language-specific content-specific systems AI to save us, is doomed to fail," she added.

Asked why Facebook wouldn’t get rid of "downstream MSIs" when data showed the system expanded hate speech, misinformation and violence-inciting content, she claimed that employee bonuses are still currently tied to MSIs.

"If you hurt MSI, a bunch of people weren't gonna get their bonuses," she said.


Whistleblower alleges Facebook drives profits by 'hooking kids'

With the mental health of teens and preteens a prime focus at Tuesday's hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked Haugen directly if Facebook hooks users to its platforms at a young age in order to make them more profitable over the long term.

"They know that children bring their parents online -- so they understand the value of younger users for the long-term success of Facebook," said Haugen.

She also said they know children will bring family members to the platform, if not the reverse.


"Facebook understands that if they want to continue to grow they have to find new users. They have to make sure that the next generation is just as engaged with Instagram as the current one, and the way they'll do that, making sure children establish habits before they have good self-regulation," added Hagen.

"By hooking kids?" asked Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

"By hooking kids," Haugen affirmed. "We need to protect the kids."

-ABC News' Zunaira Zaki, Mary Kathryn Burke and Victor Ordonez


Instagram's effect on kids, Facebook 'misinformation,' key concerns for lawmakers

Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security focused on whistleblower Frances Haugen's leaked internal documents showing the media giant found evidence of its harmful effects on young users and its fueling of misinformation but did nothing to address either, putting "profits before people."

For the effect on kids, Haugen said it's a problem previous generations did not have to face.

"Kids who are bullied on Instagram, the bullying follows them home. It follows them into their bedrooms. The last thing they see before they go to bed at night is someone being cruel to them. Or the first thing in the morning, someone being cruel to them," she said.

She added the Facebook "definitely" targets kids as young as eight years old through its Messenger platform, among other tactics.

Haugen said if she had the power, she would establish more transparency with congressional oversight bodies, propose legislation on what an effective oversight agency would look and immediately re-implement the "soft interventions" identified to protect the 2020 election.

"No one censored being forced to click on a link before resharing it," she said.


Hearing adjourns with plea for more whistleblowers to speak out

After more than three hours of testimony, the Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has accused the company of deceiving users and investors and putting "profits before people," has adjourned.

While lawmakers battle it out over President Joe Biden’s agenda, they united on Tuesday to blast Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s silence on Haugen accusations, which raise alarms about the mental health of children and real-world dangers of hate speech she said Facebook knows it perpetuates but ignores. Lawmakers said she has provided hundreds of pages of documents of internal data to back her claims.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the subcommittee chair, closed by reading a text he said he received from a constituent who said he was in tears watching the hearing because, he said, he's seen first-hand how Instagram has changed his teenage daughter.

"'My 15-year-old daughter loved her body at 14. Was on Instagram constantly and maybe posting too much. Suddenly she started hating her body. Her body dysmorphia, now anorexia, and was in deep deep trouble before we found treatment. I fear she'll never be the same,'" Blumenthal said, quoting the father.

Haugen said "because of the nature of engagement-based ranking and amplification of interests," Facebook and Instagram users are "pushed towards extreme dieting and pro-anorexia content very rapidly" -- but that the algorithm perpetuating that could be changed.

After raising new allegations concerning Zuckerberg’s actions, national security concerns, and employee bonuses tied to a system shown to fuel misinformation, Haugen closed with a call to Congress to address Facebook’s growth and provide oversight as it’s historically done for other industries, like tobacco, in the past.

Saying that modern technological systems "walled off," Haugen also called on more whistleblowers with direct knowledge of wrongdoings in big tech to step forward.

"The fact we're being asked these false choices -- it's just an illustration of what happens when the real solutions are hidden inside of companies," she said. "We need more tech employees to come forward through legitimate channels, like the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) or Congress, to make sure that the public has the information they need in order to have technologies be human-centric, not computer central."