Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says

This is a discussion of an interview recorded 2024-08-19 with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. After the interview, at most 29 minutes from it will be broadcasted the following day as Radio Active Magazine on KKFI. And a video of it will be posted here followed a few days later by a 29:00 mm:ss audio file, prepared for distribution as the "Media & Democracy" show syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations.

It is posted here to invite others to contribute other perspectives, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and treating others with respect.

Frances Haugen summarizes the tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents that she released to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021. These documents, called "The Facebook Files", describe how Facebook executives have knowingly contributed to major problems, because they did not know how to deliver the good quality services that make people’s lives better while suppressing the negative effects — and because doing otherwise would likely have reduced their profits. These problems include increasing teen suicides and political polarization and violence in many countries, including the genocide of Rohingyan Muslims in Myanmar.

Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen discusses her concerns with how Facebook executives seemed to have prioritized profits over the public good.

29:00 mm:ss extract from interview with Frances Haugen on how Facebook executives prioritized profits while knowingly contributing to increased teen suicides and political polarization and violence, including the genocide of the genocide of Rohingyan Muslims in Myanmar

Haugen says this works, "because the shortest path to a click is anger or hate. This is a problem, because Internet companies want to maximize their profits, which rely on clicks.

Facebook (and many other Internet companies) go to great lengths to screen out people who would intentionally do evil; Google famously says, “Don’t do evil.” She insists that the major problems attributed to social media (and other Internet companies) are more due to negligence than intent.

She also suggests changes in governmental policies that could force social media companies to be less antisocial, thereby improving the health and educational experiences of children while reducing the suicide rate. She notes that social media executives have so far largely refused to adopt such policies, because they believe that doing so would likely reduce their profit.

She has supported the Digital Services Act adopted by the European Union but says it does not go far enough. She thinks academic and civil society researchers should have near total access to data held by Internet companies with appropriate privacy guarantees. This would support better documentation of the need for better policies and analyses of alternative policies. This better documentation could in turn help concerned citizens and activist organizations work effectively for positive change, sometimes enforced by appropriate legislation.

Haugen compares the current situation with social media with that of automobile safety in 1965 when Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, with a subtitle, The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. At that time, there were 5.3 motor vehicle fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Since 2007 this number has fluctuated between 1.08 and 1.37, roughly a fifth of what it was in 1965. Haugen attributes this in large part to how Nader's book helped groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobby more effectively for reforms, e.g., mandating seat belts, collapsible steering columns, and air bags. Similar citizen activism, she insists, can lead to dramatic improvements in how social media impacts users and society more generally. However, they need access to data, which social media companies rarely provide to outsiders.

More is available in her 2023 autobiography, The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook.

Ms. Haugen is interviewed Spencer Graves.

The threat

Internet company executives have knowingly increased political polarization and violence including the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, because doing otherwise might have reduced their profits. Documentation of this is summarized in Category:Media reform to improve democracy.

Discussion

[Interested readers are invite to comment here, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and treating others with respect.]

Bibliography

• Frances Haugen (2023). The power of one : how I found the strength to tell the truth and why I blew the whistle on Facebook (in en). Little, Brown and Company. Wikidata Q128839326. ISBN 978-0-316-47522-8. 
• Ralph Nader (1965), Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, Richard Grossman, LCCN 65016856, OCLC 568052, Wikidata Q2027386