Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an internal Facebook investigation that showed the company knows exactly how toxic its product is to the people who use it.
Tonight, we learned how the Wall Street Journal managed to obtain these documents: An informant named Frances Haugen spoke to CBS News' 60 Minutes about the ways in which Facebook poisons society.
Haugen explained in 60 Minutes how Facebook's algorithm selects content that is likely to anger users because it provokes more reactions. User reactions are converted by Facebook into advertising dollars.
"Facebook research shows that content that is hated, divisive, polarizing, inspires anger in the world rather than other emotions," Haugen told 60 Minutes.
"Facebook has realized that if it changes its algorithm, people will spend less time on the site, click on fewer ads, and thus earn less money."
Whenever we talk about social media and the ways in which it harms society, there are many Big Tech companies to think about (Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest). But, according to Haugen, Facebook is uniquely awful.
"I've seen a lot of social media and it was much worse on Facebook," Haugen told 60 Minutes.
Haugen used to work for Pinterest and Google but insists that Facebook is really worse than other Big Tech companies in many ways.
Haugen worked on Facebook's Civic Integrity team, which was responsible for combating the misinformation policy on the platform. But the company was clear after the US presidential election in November 2020 that Civic Integrity would not close.
We were told: "We are dissolving the Civic Integrity team and I said 'OK, we did it in the elections.' There were no riots. We can get rid of the team now. "Two months later, we had the uprising," Haugen said.
It is important to remember that Facebook is not only destroying American democracy, it is destroying democratic institutions around the world.
One of the documents released by Frances Haugen shows that political parties in Europe had to start running negative ads in order to get more reactions from their Facebook members.
Summarizing the position of political parties in Europe, Haugen explained: "You are forcing us to take positions we do not like, which we know are bad for society. We know that if we do not take these positions, we will not win in the social media market ".
Facebook's internal research shows that it detects only 3-5% of hate speech rhetoric on the platform and less than 1% of incitement to violence, according to a study leaked by Haugen. And yet Facebook still considers its platform to be the best in the world in detecting hatred and inciting violence on social media.
Facebook also owns the Intagram platform, and according to 60 Minutes, documents leaked by Haugen show that 13,5% of teenage girls report that Instagram causes suicidal thoughts and 17% say they do the eating habits. their disorders worse.
All of these are part of Facebook's business model that makes a lot of money from this misery. Facebook obviously has a different view.
Haugen reports that the people who work on Facebook are not bad.
"No one on Facebook is malicious, but their motives are wrong. Like, Facebook makes more money when you consume more content. Employees enjoy doing things that provoke emotional reactions. "And the more anger there is, the more they interact and the more they consume."
"I understand Mark, because he never started a hate platform. "But it has allowed choices to be made that have hatred as side effects, as polarized content offers more distribution and more impact."
When 60 Minutes spoke to Haugen's lawyer John Tye, who works with whistleblowers, he said there was a law protecting people who speak to the SEC.
"The Dodd-Frank Act, passed ten years ago, says no company can prevent its employees from contacting the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and sharing internal corporate documents," Tye told 60 Minutes.
We'll see….
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
