The tour began with an European Tour in Britain this previous Facebook manager was investigated by the policymakers who were drafting more stringent tech rules.
LONDON London Facebook has been a constant source of the midst of controversy ever from the time Mark Zuckerberg started it as an Harvard undergrad in the year 2004. However, the actions taken by Frances Haugen, a former product manager, have led to a an outrage and public relations controversy that is unique.
In the morning, she launched her carefully planned campaign to make a case for more stringent supervision of the giant social media company to Europe. Before British legislators She painted a picture of a company that is fully conscious of its negative impact on society, but unwilling to act due to the fear that doing so could endanger profits and growth.
Just hours before she started speaking in London More than one dozen media agencies released stories based on the Facebook Papers, a archive of documents that she took prior to resigning from the business.
“We need regulation,” Ms. Haugen said on Monday. “Until the incentives change, Facebook will not change,” she said in a later interview.
The social media giant on Monday reported that the company’s profits in the last quarter which ended in September, increased 17 percent up to $9.2 billion, which reflects the strength of the company’s finances.
The revelations by the aforementioned Ms. Haugen have generated increased public support for a new regulation across both the United States and Europe, and some have called to Zuckerberg to step down as CEO. Zuckerberg to step down from his position as chief executive at Facebook. This puts Facebook in the defense. The growing squabble could trigger new investigations by the government and could make it necessary for the company to reveal more information about how its software operates.
“Facebook is failing to prevent harm to children, it’s failing to stop the spread of disinformation, it is failing to stop the spread of hate speech,” John Nicolson, a lawmaker from Scotland was speaking at this hearing. “It does have the power to deal with these issues, it’s just choosing not to.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut said that the coverage of news that is based upon Facebook Papers Facebook Papers “resoundingly adds to the drumbeat of calls for reform, rules to protect teens, and real transparency and accountability from Facebook and its Big Tech peers.”
Mrs. Haugen left Facebook with numerous internal research documents and slide decks, discussions threads, notes, and presentations that she presented to regulators, lawmakers and journalists. The data provides a candid account of how certain individuals inside the company attempted to warn of its negative consequences and often failed to persuade Facebook management to do something about it.
After leaking firm documents the Wall Street Journal that led to a series of articles which began in September and continued through October, Mrs. Haugen revealed her identify during the month of September for an appearance on “60 Minutes” and testified before an Senate committee. She also made the documents available in officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Since then, she’s disclosed the Facebook documents to other news outlets such as The New York Times, and has resulted in more articles on Facebook’s negative effects, such as its function in disseminating false information about elections across the United States and stoking the divisions in other countries, such as India.
During a meeting of financial analyst on the Monday the CEO. Zuckerberg strongly criticized the press coverage and criticism that stemmed out of. Haugen’s leaked emails.
“My view on what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to create a false picture about our company,” he added.
“Any honest account should be clear that these issues aren’t just about social media,” said the author. “That means that whatever Facebook does, we’re never going to solve them alone.”
Mitch Henderson, a company spokesperson, has defended Facebook’s policies and stated that it had invested $13 billion, and hired the services of 40,000 employees to address safety concerns.
“Contrary to what was discussed at the hearing, we’ve always had the commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our sites,” said the man stated. “People don’t want to see it when they use our apps and advertisers don’t want their ads next to it.”
Ms. Haugen’s trip through Europe is an indication of Europe’s aggressive approach to regulation of tech and a belief that policymakers will take action quicker as other countries in United States to pass new laws targeting Facebook as well as the other major tech companies. In the next few weeks she will be in contact with officials from France, Germany and Europe. Haugen has additional meetings with officials from France, Germany and the European Union about new laws she believes are necessary to make it more difficult for Facebook to change the way it assesses success and put more emphasis on the common good.
“For all the problems Frances Haugen is trying to solve, Europe is the place to be,” said Mathias Vermeulen, the public policy director at AWO the law firm and a policy firm which is one of the organizations who work alongside Ms. Haugen in the United States and Europe.
In London In London, the London-based Ms. Haugen told policymakers that regulations could undermine Facebook’s culture of reward that make people spend more time browsing through their social media feeds however, she views safety as a lesser “cost center.”
The influence of Facebook is particularly significant in regions such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East where its services are widely used. However, the company does not have a cultural or language expertise in the region the way it does elsewhere, Mrs. Haugen said. In the absence of intervention from the government, she told lawmakers, the events occurring in nations like Ethiopia and Myanmar in which Facebook was accused of facilitating ethnic violence, are the “opening chapters of a novel that is going to be horrific to read.”
She suggested policies that could oblige Facebook to conduct annual risk assessments in order to pinpoint areas in which its products may be creating harm, like coronavirus misinformation, or teens their mental health. She suggested that Facebook might be required to provide specific solutions and share results with external researchers and auditors to ensure that they’re sufficient.
In the absence of transparency mandated by the government, Facebook may provide a false image of its efforts in tackling extremist and hateful content, she claimed. Facebook claims that its artificial intelligence software is able to detect more than 90% of hateful speech, however the company’s Ms. Haugen said the number was lower than 5 per cent.
“They are very good at dancing with data,” she said.
British policymakers are working on legislation to establish an online regulator, which could impose billions of dollars of fines if nothing is put in place to prevent the spreading of hatred speech false information racist abuse, and other harmful content targeted at children.
The ideas for policy gained momentum following the death in the month David Amess who was a Member of Parliament, which led to calls for the use of law for social media firms to combat extremism.
In Brussels In Brussels, In Brussels. Haugen is scheduled to meet on November. 8 in Brussels with European Union officials drafting laws that will require Facebook and other major online platforms to provide more information about the ways in which their algorithms determine which content over others, and apply stricter antitrust regulations to prevent them from using their positions of dominance to block smaller competitors. European officials are discussing the ban of targeted advertising using a user’s data profile, which could pose a serious threats to Facebook’s billion-dollar advertising business.
Despite increasing support from the political establishment for new regulations, many concerns remain over how such regulations will work in actual. The new laws that are proposed in Britain and in the European Union are not expected to be enacted until in the next year or so. For the United States, lawmakers are looking at the harmful effects from Facebook along with other online platforms on children.
Controlling Facebook is particularly difficult as the majority of the issues are related to content shared by users across the globe, posing complicated questions regarding the regulation of free speech and freedom of expression. In Britain the brand new security law for online users has been criticised by a few civil society groups as too restrictive and a threat to freedom of expression online.
Another issue is how to apply the new rules, especially at a time where numerous federal agencies have been pressured to cut spending.