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FAceBook Inc’s global security chief faced tough questions from lawmakers who accused the company of prioritizing profit and growth over the health of its youngest users.
In a hearing on Thursday, senators captured Facebook’s internal research about the mental-health effects of its platforms, arguing that the social media giant cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of children and teens. can. Senator Richard Blumenthal said Facebook has chosen “development over children’s mental health and well-being, in a greed to stop children’s suffering.”
“Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” said Blumenthal, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s consumer protection panel.
Facebook’s global security chief Antigone Davis said the company uses its own studies and works with outside experts to keep young users safe on its platform, give parents more security options and Prevent people under the age of 13 from lying about their age. Creating accounts
Davis said, “That’s why we conduct this research: to identify where we can improve our platforms, to minimize the bad and maximize the good, and where we can improve.” ” “Facebook is committed to creating better products for young people, and to doing everything we can to protect their privacy, security, and well-being on our platform.”
hearing is as follows Reporting By the Wall Street Journal that Facebook deemed the negative effects of its photo-sharing app, Instagram, on young users to include anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts, and still undercut the research. Nearly a third of teenage girls with body image issues told Facebook that scrolling through Instagram made those problems worse, according to documents reviewed by the newspaper.
Journal too Detailed How Facebook knows that millions of celebrities get special treatment for questionable content, human traffickers actively use the platform and an algorithm change has fueled increasingly divisive posts. The newspaper chain has drawn anger at the social media giant in Washington, though lawmakers are still far from passing a proposed law aimed at the platform.
“You’ve lost faith and we don’t trust you,” Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, a ranking Republican on the panel, told Davis.
Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said he thinks the hearing will add momentum to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act – updating the 1998 law that prohibits data collection on people under the age of 13. He also said that he would consider issuing summons to anyone. Additional internal study from Facebook.
“The combination of today’s testimony and the whistle-blower evidence on Tuesday will certainly pick up the momentum very powerfully,” Blumenthal told Bloomberg, referring to a public hearing next week with a former Facebook employee, who told the Journal. Provided company documents. “There is certainly the urgency of the problem.”
Read also: Facebook is entering an era of uncertainty for its investors
sharp questions
Senators asked scathing questions about suicide rates for Instagram users, specific policy changes resulting from Facebook’s research, and the company’s business model guiding product design.
Davis emphasized that the company’s study did not establish a causal relationship between Instagram use and mental health outcomes, and explained how the company has made changes to the platform to improve the user experience. Davis talked about her experience raising a daughter, and with her brother and a close friend who died by suicide.
“If there’s one person on our platform who attributes their suicidal ideation to our platform, that’s too much,” Davis said. “We care deeply about it.”
Senators also questioned Facebook’s governance model, in which most of the power and decision-making ability was concentrated in the hands of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. When asked who in the company would sign off on releasing more research or approving product changes, Davis said many people would be involved in such decisions and that the company is “looking to provide more transparency.”
Read also: YouTube ‘valuable’ for teen mental health, Google says Instagram fights ‘toxic’ label
‘Totally inadequate’
Instagram’s Head of Research Prati Raychaudhuri said blog post The study cited by the Journal on Sunday was a small sample of 40 teens, and most of them reported feeling better in other categories, such as loneliness and anxiety, after using Instagram. Raychoudhury’s post detailed actions taken to make Instagram a healthier platform for young people, such as adding resources for people living with eating disorders and removing some content related to suicide.
The company released two slide decks late Wednesday, outlining the mixed impact of Instagram on the way youth feel about themselves. Journal later released Excessive Documents that informed newspaper reporting.
As part of its response to the results of the Journal’s reporting, Facebook announced On Monday it will stop work on a version of Instagram for kids. Nevertheless, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in a blog post It’s still the “right thing to do” to create a version of the app for kids ages 10 to 12 to give parents more control.
Davis said that from June to August, Facebook removed 600,000 accounts belonging to children under the age of 13. She also said that the company is exploring ways to release the company’s internal studies and provide access to Facebook data to outside researchers.
Blumenthal told reporters on Wednesday that a pause on Instagram for children is “completely insufficient.”
“It’s a joke of what they should be doing, i.e. stop exploiting children and stop abusive practices that put an advantage on the safety of children,” he said.
In addition to testifying before the consumer protection subcommittee next week, the Facebook whistleblower will appear on CBS’s “60 minutesDavis said Facebook would not retaliate against whistleblowers for cooperating with the Senate. The whistleblower is no longer working at the company.—bloomberg
Read also: Instagram is not ‘toxic’ for teen girls, Facebook refutes Wall Street Journal report
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