We Agree with Frances Haugen: Facebook Prioritizes Profits Over Safety
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s internal documents, memos and October 5th, 2021 testimony corroborates our own complaint filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission - that Facebook knows the harms that occur on their family of platforms and willfully ignores them, prioritizing profits over public safety.
Our work has shown that Facebook, since it was founded, has made weak policy changes rather than preventative measures, and only when faced with public scrutiny. To visualize this, we created an interactive timeline, A History of Facebook, that is critical for regulators, journalists and users of Facebook products.
We also identified several core themes that have been supported by Haugen’s statements.
Facebook misleads and misdirects. For example, when questioned about terror, drug and child abuse content, Facebook rolls out a carefully-worded formula, saying that, “Our AI finds 99% of the [insert-toxic-content-type] we remove from our platform.” Whereas our research finds that the firm’s overall rate of removal is no more than 30% at the best.
Facebook lies to their investors about a wide range of topics from hate speech to child exploitation to “potential reach.” We predict that Facebook’s problems are only to get worse, which is why we advise divesting from the firm.
Facebook invests more in protecting English speakers, leaving non-English speaking users even more vulnerable to illicit content. We see this first hand, both in our investigative reports and in our pilot program in Tanzania, where we educate youth about how to protect themselves on the Internet.
Facebook has no incentives to solve these problems, even though the trillion dollar tech giant certainly has the resources to do so. While we agree with Haugen that there needs to be more transparency about how tech algorithms work, we also feel that the tech industry should be held liable for content that amplifies serious crimes, such as child exploitation, terror finance, drug trafficking and wildlife crime. For an in-depth coverage into how to reform the key law governing cyberspace, check out our panels featuring tech and legal experts.
Since 2017, we have filed a multi-chapter SEC complaint that outlines how Facebook systematically amplifies and enables serious crimes - including human trafficking, terrorist financing and drug and wildlife trafficking - for profit across its family of platforms. For an intimate look at our SEC filing, we are hosting an upcoming event exclusive only to our subscribers. Sign up for our newsletter here.