Social media Facebook revealer Frances Haugen in the Senate today: Facebook, which obscures its algorithms, is secretive and life-threatening, like a tobacco company

On Facebook roaring strife and hate speech can, at worst, lead to physical violence and kill people. It is a danger to our children. And that’s a problem that Facebook knows, which legislators should address, and which legislation can fix.

Here is the main content of the testimony given by a former employee of the Facebook company Frances Haugen plans to report today Tuesday to the U.S. Senate Committee on Social Media Security. Haugen has previously disclosed the company’s internal practices to The Wall Steet Journal anonymously.

Published on Monday according to the opinion In his speech, Haugen intends to compare Facebook to, among other things, tobacco waste, which in decades knew about the dangers of its products but claimed something completely different in its advertising.

“When we realized that tobacco companies were hiding the damage caused by tobacco, the government acted. When we realized that cars are safer when they have seat belts, the government acted. And today, the government is intervening in those companies that withheld evidence of opioids, ”Haugen plans to say in a statement he wrote in advance.

In Haugen, who went to Facebook’s payroll in 2019 and left the company last spring, says he saw how the social media giant always put profits ahead of the safety of the general public. He plans to report that Facebook’s internal studies have shown that the logic of the algorithms developed by the company produces hate speech and self-loathing in its users and money for the company “at the expense of the safety of us and our children”.

Prior to leaving the company, he had secretly copied tens of thousands of pages of company internal material and has applied for a federal whistleblower protection program. Haugen came out on the CBS channel with his own name and face on Sunday 60 minutes program in an interview.

Haugen told CBS that Facebook changed its algorithms during last year’s presidential election to reduce the polarizing effect of the election. Immediately after the election, however, the algorithms were restored to the old, confrontational position, which could contribute to to the violent takeover of the Congress House on 6 January.

“It really feels like a fraud against democracy,” Haugen said.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was heard by the House of Representatives in Washington in October 2019.

Haugen plans to tell the Senate that he went to work for Facebook after his friend radicalized while using Facebook. He worked in a department whose goal should have been to curb confrontation.

However, because money is more important to Facebook, the service, used by nearly three billion people, “strengthens dividing lines, extremism and polarization and weakens societies around the world,” Haugen says in a statement.

Haugen thinks Facebook’s culture is completely secretive.

“Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what’s going on inside Facebook. The company’s management hides vital information from the public, the U.S. government, its shareholders and governments around the world. The evidence I’ve presented shows that Facebook has repeatedly misled us, ”Haugen plans to say.

According to Haugen, the operating logic of the company’s algorithms has not even been opened up to Facebook’s own internal control body. He said the authorities have no way under current legislation to find out how harmful Facebook is.

“It’s like the Department of Transportation would have to adjust motoring by looking at cars on the highway. Imagine if the authorities couldn’t ride in cars, inflate their tires, or test their crashworthiness – or they wouldn’t have the knowledge that seat belts might even exist. ”

Facebook representatives have assured in their statements that the company works every day to keep Facebook a safe and positive operating environment.

Newsweek magazine said on Monday, not the founder of the company Mark Zuckerberg has never commented on Haugen’s data revealed in the Wall Street Journal, even though it began to be published in mid-September. Instead, he has published posts about sailing, for example.

Zuckerberg is Forbes magazine listing according to the world’s fifth richest man with about a hundred billion euros worth of wealth.

Haugen’s testimony in the Senate will be heard at an embarrassing moment, as the services of Facebook and its owned Whatsapp and Instagram suffer from extensive outages on Monday night Finnish time. Due to the double crisis, Facebook’s stock fell five percent on Monday, the biggest drop in nearly a year.

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