Facebook papers reveal social media concerns – The Tide

Samantha WuSenior Victoria Tong logs in to Facebook on her cellphone.On Oct. 22, data scientist and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released thousands of internal documents and investigative research from her former company to Congress. These documents included investigations on Facebook’s role and complicity in the Jan. 6 insurrection, lack of hate speech censorship in underdeveloped countries, misinformation among vulnerable demographics and mental health problems in teens. The papers showed discrepancies between public statements from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and creator of Facebook, and real data found in internal investigations. For example, when Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress in 2019, he said that Facebook’s algorithm removes 94 percent of hate speech and misinformation from the app before it is reported by a human. But Haugen’s documents reveal the algorithm to be removing less than five percent.  One of Haugen’s main claims was that the “profit optimizing [Facebook algorithm] is generating self-harm and self-hate — especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls.”  The design of the program had been called out for impacting youth body image and self esteem. “[On Facebook or Instagram] you may see pictures of people who are like models or influencers who have a bunch of…
Read More