Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen fears the metaverse

In an interview with the Associated Press, Haugen said that his former employer trumpeted the “metaverse” for disclosing deeper problems at the company and facing intense pressure to crack down on proactive legislative and regulatory efforts around the world. Ran. Big tech companies.

The former product-manager turned whistleblower, “If you don’t like the conversation, you try to change the conversation.” The documents he submitted to officials and his testimony to lawmakers have attracted global attention. Facebook may be aware of the damage its social media platform causes. She has been appearing several times before European lawmakers and experts to lay down rules for social media companies.

Meta, the new name for Facebook’s parent company, denied that it was trying to divert attention from those troubles by pushing the Metaverse. “This is not true. We have been working on this internally for a long time,” the company said in a statement.

It insisted that it was working responsibly to make the metaverse — like the Internet — brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described it as a “virtual environment” that you can walk into — rather than just looking at a screen — and refocus Facebook’s business model on that, including renaming the company Meta. did.

Launching that new brand has, in fact, caught the company’s attention, it said in a statement, adding that it would have delayed or canceled the launch altogether if it didn’t want an investigation.

But the new focus on the metaverse creates a whole new set of dangers, Haugen said. In “Snow Crash,” the 1992 sci-fi novel that coined the phrase, “it was something that people used to numb themselves when their lives were terrible,” she said.

“Beyond the fact that these immersive environments are extremely addictive and that they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live in,” she said, “I’m also concerned about that – for the metaverse of us. Many, many more sensors in our homes and our workplaces,” forcing users to sacrifice much of their data and their privacy.

He added that employees of companies that use the Metaverse will have no choice but to participate in the system or quit their jobs.

“If your employer decides they are now a metaverse company, you will have to give a company more personal data that demonstrates it lies whenever it is in its best interest.”

And he cautioned the public not to expect more transparency.

“They have demonstrated with respect to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making coercive mistakes, they keep doing things that prioritize their profit over our safety,” she said.

Haugen has said that Facebook’s systems fuel online hate and extremism, fail to protect young people from harmful content and that the company lacks any incentive to fix the problems, leading to internal crises at the company. Which provides free services to 3 billion. People.

To support his allegations, he gave a slew of internal documents to regulators and a bunch of news organizations including the AP.

In Tuesday’s interview, she expressed surprise that the company would focus on a new area, while it is under such intense criticism about the areas it already operates in.

“They’re going to hire 10,000 engineers to work on video games when they haven’t really got security on their core product,” Haugen said.

For this he personally blamed Zuckerberg.

“So given that I see this pattern of choices where he prioritizes growth and expansion to make sure he has what it takes, I think it’s a failure of leadership,” she said.

The company denied that it was passing profits on the security. “Yes, we are a business and we make a profit, but the idea that we do so at the cost of people’s safety or well-being is misunderstood as to where our own business interests lie,” it said. Planning to spend more than 5 billion. More than 40,000 people are employed in 2021 on safety and security and to keep users safe.

Zuckerberg had previously dismissed Haugen’s claims as a “coordinated effort” to paint a false picture of the company.

But officials in Washington and European capitals are taking his claims seriously. EU lawmakers questioned him intensively on Monday, before applauding him at the end of the 2 1/2-hour hearing.

The European Union is drafting new digital rules for the 27-nation bloc that call for reining in big “digital gatekeepers” by requiring them to be more transparent about the algorithms that determine whether people What you see on your feed and make them more accountable for the content. Forum.

Facebook has said it supports large-scale regulations, with legislative efforts in the European Union and the United Kingdom far ahead of the US.

Haugen has stopped in London and Berlin to talk to officials and lawmakers and has spoken at a technical conference in Lisbon. She will also address French lawmakers in Paris on Wednesday.