The complainant who shared valuable Facebook documents, claiming that the giant of social networks knew that his products were feeding hatred and damaging the mental health of the children, revealed his identity on Sunday in a televised interview in the United States and accused the
Company choosing “profits on safety”.
Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist, has worked for companies like Google and Pinterest, but said in an interview with the 60 minutes of CBS news program that Facebook was “substantially worse” that everything I had seen before
.
He appealed for the company to be regulated.
“Facebook again and again has shown that he prefers safety gains. It’s subsidizing, he’s paying his profits with our safety,” Haugen said.
“The Facebook version that exists today is destroying our societies and causing ethnic violence throughout the world,” he said.
The world’s largest social networking platform has been involved in a fire storm caused by Haugen, who, as anonymous complainant, shared documents with US lawmakers and the Wall Street Journal, where it is detailed how Facebook knew that its products
, Inclusive, they were harming girls.
In the interview with 60 minutes, he explained how the algorithm, who chooses what content show for each user, is optimized for the content generated by a reaction.
The company’s own research shows that it is “easier to inspire people to anger than other emotions,” Haugen said.
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to make it safer, people will spend less time on the site, they will click on fewer ads and earn less money.”
HAUGEN said that during the US presidential elections of 2020, the Company noticed the danger of said content and activated security systems to reduce it.
But “as soon as the elections ended, they went out, or the configuration was changed to before, to prioritize growth on security, and that really seems to me a betrayal to democracy,” he said.
“No one on Facebook is malevolent,” he said, adding that the incentives are “misaligned”.
“Facebook earns more money when you consume more content (…) and how much more rabies are you exposed, more interacting, more consumption.”
HAUGEN did not connect that decision to retreat the security systems with the riots in the United States Capitol on January 6, but 60 minutes noted that the social network was used by some of the organizers of that violence.
On Sunday earlier, Facebook had dismissed as “ridiculous” inferences that had contributed to the riots of January 6.
The vice president of politics and global affairs of Facebook, Nick Clegg, also rejected with vehemence the affirmation that his platforms are “toxic” for adolescents, days after a tense audience in Congress in which US legislators questioned the company
On his impact on the mental health of young users.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Clegg tried to anticipate Haugen’s interview writing a memorandum of 1,500 words to staff to alert them from “deceptive” accusations.
Then Clegg stressed his defense in an appearance on CNN.
“The affirmation (that) on January 6 can be explained by social networks, I just think it’s ridiculous,” Clegg told the channel, and added that it was a “false consolation” to blame the technology of promoting the increasingly
Deep political polarization of the United States.
The responsibility of the insurrection “rests directly on people who inflicted violence and those who encouraged it, including the then President Trump” and others who claimed that the elections had been stolen, he added.
While all over the world “has an unscrupulous uncle” or an exposure of class with extreme opinions visible on Facebook, Clegg wrote in his memorandum, “Changes in algorithmic classification systems on a social networking platform can not explain a polarization
Social wider “.
Facebook has received criticism of supposedly feeding social problems, attacks that according to Clegg should not be attributed to Facebook.
However, he acknowledged that people with pre-existing problems may not benefit from the use of social networks.
“I do not think it’s intuitively surprising that, if you do not feel good about yourself, go to social networks makes you feel a little worse,” he told CNN.
He also questioned the reports of an explosive series of the Wall Street Journal on Facebook’s own research, in which he warned about Instagram damage, the application to share photos, can do the welfare of adolescents.
“It is simply not confirmed by our research, nor for anyone else, Instagram is bad or toxic to all adolescents,” said Clegg, but added that Facebook’s research will continue.