Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: The 60 Minutes Interview By 60 Minutes

her name is Francis Haugen that is a fact that Facebook has been anxious to know since last month when an anonymous former employee filed complaints with federal law enforcement the complaints say Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate misinformation and political unrest but the company hides what it knows one complaint alleges that Facebook’s Instagram harms teenage girls what makes Haugen’s complaints unprecedented is the Trove of private Facebook research she took when she quit in May the documents appeared first last month in the Wall Street Journal but tonight Francis Haugen is revealing her identity to explain why she became the Facebook whistleblower

the story will continue in a moment

thing I saw on Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook and Facebook over and over again shows to optimize for his own interests like making more money on a date of scientist from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a Harvard master’s degree in business for fifteen years she’s work for companies including Google and Pinterest I seen a bunch of social networks you just quit and moved on and I wonder why you take the stand you know what’s going on I knew what my future look like if I continue to stay inside a Facebook which is person after person after person has tackled this inside of Facebook and ground themselves to the ground

company at some point in 2021 I realized okay I’m going to have to do this in a systemic way and I have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real

she secretly copied tens of thousands of pages of Facebook internal research she says evidence shows that the company is lying to the public about making significant progress against hate violence and misinformation one study she found from this year says we estimate that we may action as little as three to five percent of hate and about six tenths of 1% of violence and incitement on Facebook despite being the best in the world at it to quote from another one of the documents you brought out

we have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world when we live in an information environment that is full of angry or hateful polarizing content it arose are Civic trust and faith in each other and Rose are ability to want to care for each other the version of Facebook that exist today is tearing our societies apart and causing nothing violence around the world ethnic violence including Myanmar in 2018 when the military used Facebook to launch a genocide

are the first quarter of 2019 Francis Haugen told us she was recruited by Facebook in 2019 she says she agreed to take the job only if she could work against misinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories were in terms of making sure that was high-quality information on Facebook she was assigned to Civic Integrity which worked on risks to elections including this information but after this past election there was a turning point

they basically said we made it three election there wasn’t riots we never Civic Integrity now fast-forward a couple months we got the interaction and when they got rid of Civic Integrity it was the moment where I was like

I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest with needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous is distributed to other units Haugen told us the route of Facebook’s problem is in a change that it made in 2018 to its algorithms the programming that decides what you see on your Facebook news feed the cat is thousands of options I can show you the algorithm pics from those options based on the kind of content you’ve engaged with the most in the past to the house Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for Content that gets engagement or reaction but its own research is showing the content that is hateful that is

divisive and polarizing

it’s easier to inspire people to anger and it is to other emotions is enticing to people and Keith keeps them on the platform yes Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer people will spend less time on the site will click on less ads they’ll make less money to book understood the danger to the 2020 election so it turned on Safety Systems to reduce misinformation but many of those changes she says we’re temporary as soon as the election is over they turn them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before surprise grow there for safety and that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me

Facebook says some of the Safety Systems remained but after the election Facebook was used by some to organize the January 6th Insurrection prosecutors site Facebook posts as evidence photos of armed partisans and text including by Bullet or Ballard restoration of the Republic is coming extremist use many platforms but Facebook is a recurring theme after the attack Facebook employees raged on an internal Message Board copied by Haugen haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage this course without enabling violence we look for positive comments and found this I don’t think our leadership team ignores data ignores descent ignores truth

but that Drew this reply welcome to Facebook I see you just joined in November 2020 we have been watching wishy-washy actions of company leadership for years now colleagues cannot conscience working for a company that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects of its platform Facebook essentially amplifies the worst of human nature it’s one of these unfortunate consequences but the incentives are misaligned Relic Facebook makes more money when you consume more content people enjoying gauging with things that a listener emotional reaction and the more anger the big exposed to the more they interact the more they consume

that Dynamic led to a complaint to Facebook by major political parties across Europe This 2019 internal report obtained by Haugen says that the parties feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their Communications on Facebook leading them into more extreme policy positions the European political parties were essentially saying to Facebook the way you’ve written your algorithm is changing the way we lead our country and to take position so we don’t like that we know are bad for society we know if we don’t take those positions we won’t win in the marketplace of social media harm she says extends to Facebook’s Instagram app one of the Facebook internal studies that you found talks about how Instagram harms teenage girls

one study says 13 and a half percent of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes Eating Disorders worse it’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says as these young women begin to consume the seams were content to get more more depressed I actually makes them use the app more

so they end up in the feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more more Facebook’s own research says it is not just the Instagram is dangerous for teenagers that are harm teenager is that is distinctly worse than other forms of social media said just last week it would postpone plans to create an Instagram for younger children

last month Haugen’s lawyers filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission which enforces the law in financial markets the complaints compare the internal research with the company’s public face off in that of CEO Mark Zuckerberg here testifying remotely to Congress last March 7th real world Farm we built an unprecedented third party fact-checking program the system isn’t perfect but it’s the best approach that we’ve found to address misinformation in line with our country is Bali

one of France’s Haugen’s lawyers is John tie he’s the founder of a Washington legal group called whistleblower Aid what is the legal theory behind going to the SEC what laws are you alleging have been broken as a publicly traded company Facebook is required to not lie to its investors or even withhold material information so the SEC regularly brings enforcement actions alleging that companies like Facebook and others are making material misstatements and omissions that affect investors adversely one of the things that Facebook might alleges that she stole company documents the Dodd-Frank Act passed over 10 years ago at this point created office of The Whistleblower inside the SEC and one of the provisions of that law says that no company

a Hibbett its employees from from communicating with the SEC and sharing internal corporate documents with the SEC make a hateful platform but he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are at the hateful polarizing content gets more distributionmore reach declined an interview but in a written statement to 60 Minutes it said everyday our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform is safe and positive place we continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content to suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true if any research had identified and exact solution to these complex challenges the tech industry

government and society would have sold them a long time ago

Facebook is a 1 trillion dollar company just 17 years old it has 2.8 billion users which is 60% of all internet connected people on Earth Francis Haugen plans to testify before Congress this week she believes the federal government should impose regulations Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently Facebook over and over again as shown issues is profit over safety it is subsidizing is paying for its profits with our safety I’m hoping that the school had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place

what’s my home

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