The past week has been hectic for Facebook, with a whistleblower leaking thousands of internal documents from the company and a six-hour outage of Facebook’s services. This recent news has drawn attention to the effect that Facebook, as well as its other social media sites such as Instagram and WhatsApp, can have on consumers.
The Whistleblower
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, following her debut on “60 Minutes,” testified at a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection hearing on Tuesday. At this hearing, Haugen raised concerns that Facebook and its products “harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy.” She described how the company had put its “astronomical profits before people” through its carelessness in preventing harm to consumers.
Haugen also directly called upon Congress to intervene and aid Facebook in addressing a variety of issues that plague its platforms, such as the spread of misinformation, mental health issues in teenagers, and extremist behavior. Even Facebook’s own internal research reports, leaked by Haugen, suggest that the company causes significant and distinct harm. However, the company is yet to take action or disclose information directly to the public.
Haugen stated that “left alone, Facebook will continue to make choices that go against the common good.” She also accused Facebook of “intentionally [hiding] vital information from the public, from the U.S. government, and from governments around the world,” “choosing to grow at all costs,” and “buying its profits with our safety.”
Throughout the hearing, Haugen explained how Facebook’s algorithms promote the spread of dangerous content to consumers. Engagement-based ranking, meaningful social interactions (MSIs), and amplification mechanisms are especially significant. These algorithmic components determine what content to show users based on what that user engages with. According to Haugen, “Facebook knows that content that elicits an extreme reaction from you is more likely to get a click, a comment, or reshare.”
Haugen also described Facebook’s awareness of the fact that “[Facebook’s] engagement-based ranking … amplifies preferences.” In certain cases, she explained, this can lead users to harmful content. For example, young users who are interested in innocuous topics, such as healthy recipes, can quickly become exposed to content that promotes eating disorders.
To address the aforementioned issues, Haugen recommended possible measures to be taken. One measure would include requiring users to click on a link before sharing it to prevent misinformation or making changes to the algorithms that Facebook uses to prevent the spread of harmful content.
Frances Haugen, who believes that “a safer, free-speech respecting, more enjoyable social media is possible,” ended her testimony by stating that other tech employees need to come forward to ensure that the public has access to more information about the operational practices of Facebook and similar companies.
With the recent revelations on Facebook’s impact on young people, specifically Instagram’s effect on teenage girls, students throughout the world have felt the direct impact of this company’s conduct, including feelings of insecurity and jealousy. One Mira Loma student concluded that “[social media] can be very damaging if you use it wrong.”
Leaked documents describe the negative effects that Facebook has on the mental health of teenage girls, as well as how they perceive their bodies. According to one internal report from Facebook, 13.5 percent of U.K. teenage girls said that Instagram worsens their suicidal thoughts. Another found that 17 percent of teenage girls said that using Instagram caused their eating disorders to become worse.
One internal report from Facebook acquired by the Wall Street Journal in September stated that “thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”
During the hearing, Haugen also described the cycle that many young people find themselves stuck in. While they recognize the harm that social media sites are causing to them, they continue to stay on those platforms. This sort of use, referred to as “problematic use,” represents a user who cannot control their own social media usage. This inability to regulate their use of social media is a detriment to their mental or physical health, and it has become increasingly prevalent amongst young people.
As one of the largest technology companies in the world, Facebook’s services provide consumers with the ability to communicate across the globe. While this allows people to easily share their thoughts with people across continents, it also aids the spread of misinformation and other dangerous content.
The result has become increasingly clear, with acts of domestic terrorism in the United States originating from social media platforms, such as Facebook. One such event was the attack on the Capitol, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project.
The Outage
On Monday Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced an outage that lasted for almost six hours and affected users worldwide. The failure of these services, which are used by billions, interrupted daily activities business operations. As a result, even Facebook’s own employees were locked out of buildings.
Once these services were restored, Facebook explained that the outages had occurred as a result of faulty “configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between [Facebook’s] data centers.”
Monday’s outage greatly affected life around the world, particularly in countries that rely on these platforms to conduct business and deliver necessary government services, including health care and education.
Since WhatsApp and similar services are less expensive than traditional phone calls or text messages, they are crucial in many countries. When these services failed, many had no recourse. This has brought on a debate over how much power Facebook, and other big tech companies, should have over international communications and the lives of consumers.
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