The particular way of the cross of Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has stopped this Tuesday morning in the United States Senate. Frances Haugen, a former employee of the company, has testified before the members of the subcommittee for Consumer Protection and Data Security to denounce that the algorithm of the social network is harmful to children and adolescents and that technology knowingly affects those harmful practices with a single objective: to make more money. “[La empresa] it puts the obtaining of astronomical benefits before the well-being of the people ”, he said.
Haugen is the same 37-year-old computer engineer, born in Iowa and with a degree from Harvard as Zuckerberg, who leaked The Wall Street Journal information extracted from tens of thousands of documents that revealed the bad practices of the technology, which, among other things, knew that its applications pushed teenagers into the abyss of suicidal thoughts and eating disorders and did nothing to prevent it. The same worker who fired them from the company when she left her job in May after two years and who revealed her identity on Sunday in prime time at the CBS program 60 Minutes, American television journalistic institution.
“My name is Frances Haugen,” he said at the beginning of his speech, which was written to the Senate. “I used to work on Facebook. I joined the company because I believe in its potential to bring out the best in us. I stand before you today to affirm that your products harm children, fuel division, weaken our democracy, and much more. Those who run the business know how to make Facebook and Instagram more secure, but they won’t. (…) It is urgent that Congress act. This crisis will not be solved any other way ”.
Facebook has discredited through the Twitter account of a spokesperson, Andy Stone, the testimony of his former employee, claiming that she “did not work in the part in charge of child safety or on Instagram; he did not even act on those matters on Facebook and lacks direct knowledge on the subject. “
This morning, Haugen and the senators have toiled in a severe, more than three-hour examination of technology. In the interesting question time, the subject of the hearing, entitled Protecting children online: the testimony of a Facebook ‘deep throat’, with that unbeatable local talent for the Hollywood epic. There has also been talk of the effects of the social network on issues such as ethnic violence in Ethiopia or the assault on the Capitol this year. Haugen describes “a system that amplifies division, extremism and polarization, and undermines societies around the world.” “That causes violence in real life, which sometimes costs lives. (…) Facebook’s internal investigations have repeatedly confirmed these problems. We are talking about a company that has become a multimillion dollar company at the expense of our safety, including that of our children ”.
The deep Throat He recalled that he speaks from his previous work experience in four technology companies and, therefore, from his “ability to compare.” And he has asked legislators to act as they did with “the tobacco industry, when the obligation to wear seat belts in cars or in the face of the opiate epidemic was imposed.” “Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside Facebook,” he added. “Vital information is withheld from the US government, its own shareholders, and governments around the world to get around the law. The documents I have provided show that they repeatedly mislead us on issues such as children’s safety, their role in spreading hateful messages and polarization. ” Haugen has described a vicious circle, according to which the technology firm needs to create a reaction that creates dependency on its users, and that is best achieved with “content that incites hatred and arouses passions.”
He explained that what led him to leave his post was the verification that the measures that the technology company adopted for the 2020 elections, aimed at controlling the dissemination of erroneous information, were ephemeral. As soon as the elections passed, they rose, he clarified, which had “consequences during the assault on the Capitol” on January 6.
The text read by Haugen has been published The Washington Post minutes before the appearance, in another demonstration of his mastery of the media during this process. The document sported the letterhead of Whistleblowers Aid, a non-profit organization based in the federal capital, which serves as a bridge between citizens who have blankets to pull and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), sentinel of the market. US law protects such document leaks, one of Whistleblowers Aid’s attorneys recalled in 60 Minutes.
Facebook, which has 3,500 million users, 60% of the population that uses the Internet in the world, and which is essential in countries like India or Burma, where it is synonymous with “internet access”, is going through one of the worst weeks in recent history, riddled with scandals since the Cambridge Analytica revelations four years ago. Then it emerged that user data was used uncontrollably during the 2016 campaign that brought Donald Trump to the White House.
Added to the crisis unleashed by Haugen was a blackout on Monday that left billions of users of the social network without service for five hours, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the virtual reality platform Occulus. Although it was inevitable to think of a relationship between that blackout and the Hagen leak, it was all due to human failure, according to the first investigations. Be that as it may, it made clear once again the dependence on technology in our contemporary societies.
“Facebook has abused teenage girls with its powerful algorithms, which amplify their insecurities. Zuckerberg should look into the mirror of his infamy; instead, he takes his sailboat and goes sailing ”, denounced Richard Blumenthal, Democratic senator for the state of Connecticut and chairman of the subcommittee, before giving the floor to Haugen. He was referring to a 38-second video that the Facebook founder posted on Sunday on the social network he founded 17 years ago. In it, with In a Sentimental Mood, with Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in the background, a certainly melancholic soundtrack as a finishing touch to a week to forget, he could be seen on a sailboat with his wife, Priscilla Chan, as the world prepared for the amazing revelations that 60 minutes had prepared.
A spokesperson for the company sent a text to the CBS television program in which he excused the decisions that are now in question: “To suggest that we do nothing about it is simply not true. They are very complex matters, ”he said. Haugen, still a strong believer in social media, explained this morning: “They want us to believe that these problems have no solution. That what underlies is a dilemma between freedom of expression and privacy; between the fun of sharing photos with your family and the distribution of misinformation. I have come to tell you that this is not true. All of this has a solution. It is possible to create safer social networks, if we do not let Facebook choose its own benefit for the welfare of its users. If we don’t do something, nothing will change ”.
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