The mole that gets Facebook and Instagram into trouble

editorial board
Oct 04, 2021 06:14


“Facebook understands that if they change the algorithm to be more secure, people will spend less time on the site, click on fewer ads and earn less” – Facebook has put “profits above the safety” of the audience. Mole words can be devastating Frances Hogan, the ex-employee who plunged Zuckerberg into its deepest crisis since Cambridge Analytics. In an interview with60 minutes‘ On the CBS He says he has also filed complaints with the SEC, the US consob, accusing the social network of hiding his research and studies from investors and the public. 37 years old, brave and knowledgable. It is also the main source of the Facebook Files project The Wall Street Journal. He worked in many social networks, but found the situation “worse” in Facebook.

Who is Frances Hogan Mole

But what did Haugen say about explosives?

Frances Haugen, who explains why she decided to become the Mole and denounce the company. Haugen is the one who introduced The Wall Street Journal In recent months, internal documents revealed a hitherto unknown cross-section of Facebook.

“There was a security plan” and controls on hate messages and disinformation that appeared on Facebook, but “after the 2020 presidential election something changed,” revealed Haugen, a Harvard graduate who was hired in 2019 as a data engineer. Algorithms will change and the system will become “less secure”. From that moment on – again according to Haugen’s account – the social platform relaxed censorship of hate messages and content containing misinformation about the election result, and ended up favoring the dissemination of messages related to alleged fraud.

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Haugen walks out, showing her face and painting a disturbing picture. Today he will be in Congress for certification “They believed that if they changed the algorithms to make the system more secure, people would spend less time on social media, would click on ads less,” and Facebook would “make less money,” the former employee said. They always preferred – he added – profit over safety.

Haugen said he decided to take this fight because he lost a loved one to conspiracy theories circulating on social media. And’ She was very clear in her previous employer’s assessment. “There was a conflict of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” he said. “Facebook has chosen over and over to improve their own interests and how to make more money.”

Instagram’s impact on teens

On Instagram, the engineer claimed that It has a huge impact on the lives of teenagers: “Facebook research – she said – says that young women who follow content related to an eating disorder, the more they follow these topics, the more depressed they become. This leads to more Instagram use.”

In a written note, Facebook defended itself by saying that the company “continues to make significant improvements to counter the spread of misinformation and content that can harm people. The claim that we encourage bad content and do nothing to stop it is not true.”

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