'Twitchy, toxic, divisive': Facebook's Instagram problem implodes – Telangana Today

New York: “Twitchy”, “toxic”, “divisive”. Facebook’s Instagram problem is imploding. Facebook bought out the photo sharing app for $1 billion in 2012 and on Tuesday, a whistleblower blew the covers off how Facebook engineers the toxic connections driving teens on Instagram to the brink. The damning revelations came via more than 200 minutes of live testimony in US Congress Tuesday. Recently leaked internal Facebook documents show that 13 per cent of British users and 6 per cent of American users trace their desire to kill themselves to Instagram. After first confronting Facebook’s head of global safety, US lawmakers turned to whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee at the social networking giant. Facebook, according to Haugen, is laser focused on getting younger users hooked on Instagram early on so they don’t end up going to TikTok or Snapchat. “They understand the value of younger users for the long term success of Facebook,” she said Tuesday. Haugen, testifying to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, laid out the broad brushstrokes of new regulations needed to rein in Facebook and other platforms that feed off customer data to fire their growth engines. The most charged moments came when Haugen spoke about the harms…
Read More