
Facebook whistleblower revealed identity before “60 minutes” interview
A sort of Facebook The whistleblower who provided internal documents detailing the company’s research to the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Congress lifted his veil before accepting the “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday night.
Frances HoganAccording to her website, she is the former product manager of Facebook’s Citizen Misinformation Team, and she revealed that she is behind a large number of leaked documents. On her personal website, she shared that during her tenure at the company, she was “increasingly shocked by the company’s choice to put her profits above public safety-putting people’s lives at risk.” As a last resort, at great personal risk, Francis made a brave move and blew the whistle on Facebook.”
Haugen was previously a product manager Taste, cry with GoogleAccording to her LinkedIn profileShe also listed herself as the technical co-founder behind the dating app Hinge, saying that she brought its predecessor, Secret Agent Cupid, to the market.
“I’ve seen many social networks, and Facebook’s situation is worse than anything I’ve seen before,” Hogan told “60 Minutes.”
Hogan told “60 Minutes” that she left Facebook in May.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, who wrote a series of articles based on the leaked documents, also Shared Haugen’s identity on Twitter On Sunday night, it was revealed that she was the main source behind the story.
document, First report in The Wall Street Journal, Revealed that Facebook executives have realized the negative impact of its platform on some young users, as well as other survey results. For example, the Wall Street Journal reported that an internal document found that among teenagers who reported suicidal thoughts, 6% of American users traced the urge to commit suicide to Instagram.
Facebook later stated that the Wall Street Journal’s featured data and even the headlines of its internal presentations ignored potentially positive interpretations of the data. For example, many users found that their interactions with their products had a positive impact.
“Every day, our team must strike a balance between protecting the ability of billions of people to express themselves publicly and the need to keep our platform safe and active,” Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch wrote after Haugen’s identity was revealed The statement said. “We continue to make major improvements to address the spread of misinformation and harmful content. It is incorrect to suggest that we encourage bad content and do nothing.”
Haugen said that she decided to make Facebook’s internal communications public this year, and said that she realized she needed to do this “in a systematic way” and was “open enough that no one could question whether it was true.”
According to the “60 Minutes” report, Hogan in turn copied and released tens of thousands of pages of documents.
Hoogen pointed out that the 2020 election is a turning point for Facebook. She said that Facebook announced the dissolution of the “civic integrity” team she was assigned to after the election. In just a few months, social media communications will become a key focus after the US Congressional riots on January 6.
“When they got rid of civic integrity, at that moment I was like,’I don’t believe they are willing to actually invest in what needs to be invested to prevent Facebook from becoming dangerous,'” Hogan told “60 minutes.”
Facebook told the news program that it had distributed the work of the Citizen Integrity Team to other units.
Haugen pointed out that Facebook’s algorithm is an element that pushes wrong information to users. She said that Facebook recognizes the risk of misinformation to the 2020 election, so it has added security systems to reduce this risk. However, she said that Facebook once again relaxed these security measures after the election.
Haogen said: “As soon as the election is over, they turn them off or change the settings back to what they were before, giving priority to growth over security.” “To me, it really feels like a betrayal of democracy. ”
Lawmakers seemed indifferent to Facebook’s response to Wall Street reports based on Haugen’s disclosures. At the hearing of the Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on ThursdaySenators on both sides of the aisle attacked the company, urging it to temporarily suspend the establishment of a permanent Instagram platform for children. Legislators said that based on reports and past behavior, they do not believe that Facebook can be a good steward of such a platform.
The whistleblower is scheduled to testify before the Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday. Antigo Davis, Facebook’s head of global security, told lawmakers on Thursday that Facebook will not retaliate against whistleblowers for information disclosed to the Senate.
Haogen stated that she had “empathy” with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, stating that he “never planned to build a hate platform. But he allowed choices because of the side effects of these choices.” It is the content of hatred and polarization that has been spread more and more widely.”
She called for more regulations to be formulated for the company to inspect it.
“Facebook has proven time and time again that they cannot act independently. Facebook has shown that it chooses profit over safety,” Hogan told “60 Minutes.” “This is a subsidy. It uses our security to pay for profits. I hope this will have a big enough impact on the world so that they have the perseverance and motivation to actually implement these regulations. This is my hope.”
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