Facebook Whistleblower: social media 'asleep at the wheel'

Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, says there are ways social media companies can improve user safety protocols.

Jan. 1, 2023, 
By Isabelle Schmeler
Meet the Press.

NBC News

After turning over thousands of internal documents and testifying before Congress in 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen sent shockwaves through Washington amidst ongoing debates surrounding Facebook and other social media companies’ role in spreading misinformation, particularly amidst the 2020 election.

Haugen worked as Facebook’s lead Product Manager on the Civic Misinformation team initially intending to contribute to the company’s leading efforts to improve user safety protocols.

In an interview with NBC News' Meet the Press, Haugen said she was optimistic when first hired to contribute to one of the industry's leading civic responsibility units, until it dissolved after the 2020 election.

"If you want to have successful change in the enterprise, you have to appoint a vanguard. You have to have executives say, ‘these people are the future, they’re going to lead us in the right direction.’ And when Facebook dissolved Civic Integrity, I saw that they weren’t willing to make that commitment anymore."

A spokesperson for Meta disputed Haugen's version of events and said that the Civic Integrity team wasn't disbanded, but rather was "integrated into a larger Central Integrity team."

Haugen referenced her own personal experience with misinformation seeing a friend become more and more radicalized through the algorithmic patterns presented to users, citing the company's prioritization of profit over user safety.

“Facebook is scared that if we actually had transparency, if we actually had accountability, they would not be a company with 35% profit margins. They’d be a company with 15% profit margins," Haugen said, "There was a whole Macedonian misinformation factory going on. There was a cottage industry of these little blogs that would make these fake news stories, and Facebook was asleep at the wheel."

Haugen suggested that one of the simplest misinformation interventions that doesn’t threaten free speech rights is to insert deeper internationality behind which posts are and are not shared. Haugen says Facebook declined to make that slight ramification because it decreases the amount of content spread, ultimately decreasing profits.

Recommended

TRANSCRIPTSMeet the Press - January 1, 2023

“The way to think about safety on social media platforms is there’s lots of very small choices where you make them and you lose .1 or .2 percent of profit,” Haugen said, “The problem is these industries are so sensitive to growth, that when they don’t grow at the level the market expects their stock price crashes. And so they’re afraid to take even these small actions because they will decrease the profitability of the company.”

When asked about President of Global Affairs at Facebook, Nick Clegg’s “it takes two to tango” proposal, an idea he has pushed that users have the ability to choose the content they want to see, Haugen referenced studies that observed algorithmic patterns that steered users toward more extremist content.

“There are many forces in society. But our information environment does have consequences,” Haugen said, “When it comes to social media, you can spread lies, and they’re invisible. And Facebook has resisted even minimal efforts at transparency that might allow us to reconverge on a single information environment.”

Haugen has voiced support for the Platform Accountability and Transparency (PATA) Act, a bipartisan bill that would require social media companies to provide data to the public. Over 30 social media reform bills have been introduced this Congressional cycle, none have been passed into law.

“I’m a big proponent of transparency as the first step," Haugen said, "I think people aren’t aware of how far behind we are. Social media companies for 20 years, and remember, there were social media companies before Facebook, have all been very intentional."