Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on protecting kids online.

Eating secret accounts.

That are often hidden from their parents.

As unique value proposition in their words,

a unique value proposition,

a way to drive up numbers for advertisers

and shareholders at the expense of safety.

And it doubled down on targeting children,

pushing products on preteens.

Not just teens, but preteens.

That it knows are harmful to our kids.

Mental health and well being.

Instead of telling parents

Facebook concealed the facts,

it sought to Stonewall and block this

information from becoming public,

including to this committee when Senator

Blackburn and I specifically asked.

The company.

And still even now.

As of just last Thursday when a Facebook

witness came before this committee,

it has refused disclosure or even to

tell us when it might decide whether

to disclose additional documents.

And they continued their tactics even

after they knew the destruction it caused.

It isn’t just that they made money.

From these practices,

but they continued to profit from them.

Their profit was more important

than the pain that they caused.

Last Thursday the message

from Miss Antigone Davis,

Facebook’s global head of safety, was simple.

Quote This research is not

a bombshell End Quote.

And she repeated the line, not a bombshell.

Well. This research is.

The very definition of a bombshell.

Facebook and Big Tech are

facing a big tobacco moment.

A moment of reckoning.

The parallel is striking.

I sued Big Tobacco as Connecticut’s

Attorney general.

I helped to lead.

The states in that legal action,

and I remember very, very well. The moment.

In the course of our litigation,

when we learned of those files that showed.

Not only that, big tobacco knew

that its product caused cancer.

But that they had done the research.

They conceal the files.

And.

Now we knew and the world new and

big Tech now faces that big tobacco.

Jaw dropping moment of truth it is.

Documented proof that Facebook

knows its products can be addictive

and toxic to children and it’s not

just that they made money again,

it’s that they valued their profit.

More than the pain that they caused

to children and their families.

The damage to self interest and self

worth inflicted by Facebook today.

Will haunt a generation.

Feelings of inadequacy

and insecurity rejection.

And self hatred. Will impact.

This generation for years to come.

Our children. Are the ones who

are victims teens today looking

at themselves in the mirror?

Feel doubt and insecurity.

Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking

at himself in the mirror today.

And yet, rather than taking responsibility.

And showing leadership. Mr.

Zuckerberg is going sailing.

His new modus operandi, no apologies,

no admission, no action, nothing to see here.

Mark Zuckerberg,

you need to come before this committee.

You need to explain.

To Francis Hogan To us to the world.

And to the parents of America.

What you were doing and why you did it.

Instagram’s business model is pretty

straightforward, more eyeballs,

more dollars, everything Facebook does.

Is to add more users and keep them on

their apps for longer in order to hook us,

Instagram uses our private information.

To precisely target us with

content and recommendations.

Assessing that.

What will provoke a reaction?

Will keep us scrolling.

Far too often these recommendations

encourage our most destructive and dangerous

behaviors as we showed on Thursday.

We created a fake account,

my office and I did as a teen interested

in extreme dieting and eating disorders.

Instagram latched onto that teenagers

initial insecurities that then pushed

more content and recommendations

glorifying eating disorders.

That’s how Instagram’s algorithms.

And push teens into darker and darker places,

Facebook’s own researchers.

Called it Instagrams quote. Perfect storm.

Exacerbating downward spirals.

Facebook as you have put it.

This happens so powerfully maximizes,

profits and ignores pain.

Facebook’s failure to acknowledge and

to act makes it morally bankrupt.

Again and again,

Facebook rejected reforms recommended

by its own researchers.

Last week, Miss Davis said quote,

we’re looking at End Quote.

No specific plans, no commitments,

only vague platitudes.

These documents that you have revealed.

Provided this company with a blueprint for

reform and provided specific recommendation.

They could have made Facebook and

Instagram safe for the company repeatedly

ignored those recommendations from its own.

Researchers. That would have made

Facebook and Instagram safer.

Faith Facebook researchers have suggested.

Changing their recommendations.

To stop promoting accounts

known to encourage.

Dangerous body.

Comparison.

Instead of making meaningful changes,

Facebook simply pays lip service.

And if they won’t act.

And a big tech won’t act.

Congress has to intervene.

Privacy protection is long overdue.

Senator Markey and I have introduced the

Kids Act which would ban addictive tactics

that Facebook uses to exploit children.

Parents deserve better tools

to protect their children.

I’m also a firm supporter

of reforming Section 230.

We should consider narrowing this sweeping

immunity when platforms algorithms.

Amplify illegal conduct.

You’ve commented on this in your testimony,

and perhaps you’ll expand on it.

We have also heard compelling recommendations

about requiring disclosures of research

and independent reviews of these platforms.

Algorithms,

and I plan to pursue these ideas.

The Securities and Exchange Commission should

investigate your contentions and claims,

Miss Hogan and so should the

Federal Trade Commission.

Facebook appears to have misled the public

and investors and if that’s correct,

it ought to face real penalties as a

result of that misleading and deceptive.

Misrepresentation.

I want to thank all my colleagues

who are here today because.

What we have is a bipartisan congressional

road map for reform that will safeguard

and protect children from big tech.

That will be a focus of our subcommittee

moving forward, and it will continue

to continue to be bipartisan.

And finally, I’ll just end on this note.

In the past weeks and days,

parents have contacted me.

With their stories heartbreaking.

And spine chilling stories about

children pushed into eating disorders.

Bullying, online self injury of the most.

Disturbing kind.

And sometimes even taking their

lives because of social media.

Parents are holding Facebook accountable

because of your bravery is how they?

And we need to hold accountable

Facebook and all big tech as well.

Again, my thanks to you.

I am going to enter into the record a

letter from 52 state attorneys general

and from two members of the Youth

Advisory Board of Sandy Hook Promise.

As long as there’s no objection

and I will now turn to the

ranking member center platform.

Thank you Mr.

Chairman and thank you for entering

that letter in the record that we have

from our states attorneys general.

Good morning to everyone.

It is nice to see people in this hearing

room and to be here for the hearing today.

Miss Hogan.

We thank you for your appearance

before us today and for giving the

opportunity not only for Congress

but for a for the American people

to hear from you in this setting.

And we appreciate that Mr.

Chairman.

I think also thanks to you and your

staff that have worked with our team to

make certain that we had this hearing

in this opportunity today so that

we can get more insights into what

Facebook is actually doing as they

invade the privacy not only of adults,

but I’ve children and look at the

ways that they are in violation of the

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

Which is federal law?

And looking at how they are evading

that law and working around it,

and as the chairman said,

I privacy and online privacy

passing a federal privacy standard

has been long in the works.

I filed my first privacy bill when

it was in the House back in 2012,

and I think that it will be this Congress

and this subcommittee that is going

to lead the way to online privacy.

Data Security Section 230 reforms and,

of course,

Senator Klobuchar always wants to talk

about anti trust and I have to give a nod.

Senator Markey is down there.

When we were in the House,

we were probably two of the only

ones who were talking about the need

to have a federal privacy standard.

Now, as the chairman mentioned last week,

we heard from Miss Davis,

who had global safety for Facebook,

and it was surprising to us that

what she tried to do was to minimize

the information that was in these.

Documents to minimize the research

and to minimize the knowledge

that Facebook had.

At one point I even reminded her the

research was not third party research.

The research was their Facebooks

internal research, so they knew.

What they were doing,

they knew where the violations were,

and they know they are guilty.

They know this.

Their research tells them this.

Uhm, last week in advance of our hearing,

Facebook released two studies and said

that the Wall Street Journal was all wrong.

They had just gotten it wrong,

as if the Wall Street Journal did not

know how to read these documents and

how to work through this research.

Having seen the data that you’ve

presented and the other studies that

Facebook did not publicly share,

I feel pretty confident that

it’s Facebook who has done the

misrepresenting to this committee.

Here are some of the numbers that

Facebook chose not to share, and Mr.

Chairman,

I think it’s important that we look

at these as we talk about the setting

for this hearing what we learned.

Last week,

what you and I’ve been learning

over the past three years about

big Tech and Facebook.

And here you go,

66% of teen girls on Instagram

and 40% of teen boys experience

negative social comparisons.

This is Facebook’s research,

52% of teen girls who experienced

negative social comparison on

Instagram said it was caused

by images related to beauty.

Social comparison is worse on Instagram

because it is perceived as real life.

But based on celebrity standards,

social comparison mimics the grief

cycle and includes a downward

emotional spiral encompassing a

range of emotions from jealousy to

self proclaimed body dysmorphia

Facebook addiction,

which Facebook calls conveniently

problematic use.

Is most severe in teams peaking at age 14?

Here’s what else we know.

Facebook is not interested in making

significant changes to improve

kids safety on their platforms,

at least not when that would result

in losing eyeballs on post or

decreasing their ad revenues in fact.

Facebook is running scared as they

know that in their own words,

young adults are less active and

less engaged on Facebook and that

they are running out of teens.

To add to Instagram.

So teams are looking at other platforms

like Tik T.O.K and Facebook is only

making those changes that add to its

users and numbers and ultimately

its profits follow the money.

So what are these changes allowing

users to create multiple accounts

that Facebook does not delete,

and encouraging teens to create second

accounts they can hide from their parents.

They are also studying younger and

younger children as young as eight.

So this I can market to them and while

Miss Davis says that kids below 13

are not allowed on Facebook or Instagram,

we know that they are because she told

us that they recently had deleted

600,000 accounts from children under age 13.

So how do you get that many underage

accounts if you aren’t turning a

blind eye to them in the first place?

And then in order to try to clean it up,

you go to delete it and then

you say, oh, by the way,

we just in the last month deleted

600,000 underage accounts.

And Speaking of turning a blind eye,

Facebook turns a blind eye to user privacy.

News broke yesterday that the

private data of over 1.5 billion.

That’s right.

1.5 billion Facebook users is

being sold on a hacking forum.

That’s its biggest data breach to date.

Examples like this underscore my

strong concerns about Facebook

collecting the data of kids and teens

and what they’re doing with it.

Facebook also turns a

blind eye toward blatant.

Human exploitation taking place

on its platform, trafficking,

forced labor cartels,

the worst possible things one can imagine.

Big tech companies have gotten away

with abusing consumers for too long.

It is clear that Facebook

prioritizes profit over the well

being of children and all users.

So as a mother and a grandmother,

this is an issue.

That is of particular concern to me.

So we thank you for being here today.

Miss Hagan and we look forward to

getting to the truth about what

Facebook is doing with users data.

And how they are abusing their privacy

and how they show a lack of respect for

the individuals that are on their network.

We look forward to the testimony.

Thank you Mr.

Chairman. Thanks.

Senator blank.

Thank you Senator Blackburn.

I don’t know where the ranking

member would like to make it.

If you don’t mind.

Thank you.

Chairman,

Blumenthal and and I will just

take a moment or two and I do

appreciate being able to speak.

As ranking member of the full

committee this this Miss Hogan this,

is this a subcommittee hearing,

you see some vacant seats.

This pretty good attendance

for our subcommittee.

There are also a lot of things going on,

so people will be coming and going.

But I’m I’m willing to predict that

this will have almost 100% attendance

by members of the Subcommittee,

because of the importance

of this subject matter.

So thanks for coming forward to share

concerns about Facebook’s business practices,

particularly with respect to.

Children and teens and of course,

that is the the main topic of our.

It’s the title of our hearing today.

Protecting kids online.

The recent relevation revelations about

Facebook’s mental health effects on children.

And its plans to target younger

audiences are indeed disturbing.

And I think you’re going to see a

lot of bipartisan concern about this

today and and in future hearings,

they just they show how urgent

it is for Congress to act against

powerful tech companies on behalf

of children and the broader public.

And I say powerful tech companies.

They are.

Possession,

possessive of immense,

immense power.

Their product is addictive and

people on both sides of this

dioces are concerned about this.

Talked to an opinion maker just

down the hall a few moments before

this hearing this person said.

The tech gods.

Have been mystified now,

and I think this hearing today, Mr.

Chair.

Is part of the process of

demystifying big tech.

The Children of America are

hooked on their product.

It is often destructive and harmful,

and there is a cynical knowledge on

behalf of the leadership of these big tech

companies that that is true. Miss Hogan.

I I hope you will have a chance.

To talk about your work

experience at Facebook.

And perhaps compare it to other

social media companies.

Also look forward to hearing your

thoughts on how this committee and

how this Congress can ensure greater

accountability and transparency,

especially with regard to children.

So thank you, Mr.

Chairman and thank you,

Miss Hogan, for being here today.

Thanks Senator Wicker,

our witness this morning is Frances Hogan.

She was the lead product manager on

Facebook civic misinformation team.

She holds a degree in electrical

and computer engineering from Olin

College and an MBA from Harvard.

She made the courageous decision

as all of us here and many others

around the world know to leave

Facebook and revealed the terrible

truths about the company.

She learned during her tenure there.

And I think we are all in agreement

here in expressing our gratitude

and our admiration for your bravery

in coming forward. Thank you.

Miss Hogan. Please proceed.

Good afternoon chairman.

Blumenthal ranking member Blackburn

and members of the subcommittee.

Thank you for the opportunity

to appear before you.

My name is Francis Hogan.

I used to work at Facebook.

I joined Facebook because I

think Facebook has the potential

to bring out the best in us.

But I’m here today because I believe

Facebook’s products harm children,

Stoke division and weaken our democracy.

The company’s leadership knows how to

make Facebook and Instagram saver,

but won’t make the necessary

changes because they have put their

astronomical profits before people.

Congressional action is needed.

They won’t solve this crisis

without your help.

Yesterday we saw Facebook

get taken off the Internet.

I don’t know why I went down,

but I know that for more than five hours,

Facebook wasn’t used to deepen,

divides, destabilize democracies,

and make young girls and women

feel bad about their bodies.

It also means that millions of

small businesses weren’t able

to reach potential customers and

countless photos of new babies

weren’t joyously celebrated by

family and friends around the world.

I believe in the potential of Facebook.

We can have social media we enjoy.

That connects us without tearing

our democracy apart our democracy.

Putting our children in danger and

sowing ethnic violence around the world.

We can do better.

I have worked as a product manager

at large tech companies since

2006 including Google, Pinterest,

Yelp and Facebook.

My job has largely focused on

algorithmic products like Google

Plus search and recommendation

systems like the one that powers

the Facebook newsfeed.

Having worked on four different

types of social networks,

I understand how complex and

nuanced these problems are.

However,

the choices being made inside

of Facebook are disastrous.

For our children. For our public safety.

For our privacy and for our democracy.

And that is why we must demand

Facebook make changes.

During my time at Facebook,

first working as the lead product

manager for civic misinformation

and later on counterespionage,

I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter

conflicts between its own profits

and our safety.

Facebook consistently resolved these

conflicts in favor of its own profits.

The result has been more division,

more harm, more lies,

more threats and more combat.

In some cases this is this dangerous

online talk has led to actual violence

that harms and even kills people.

This is not simply a matter of certain

social media users being angry or unstable,

or about one side being

radicalized against the other.

It is about Facebook choosing

to grow at all costs,

becoming an almost trillion dollar company

by buying its profits with our safety.

During my time at Facebook,

I came to realize the devastating truth.

Almost no one outside of Facebook

knows what happens inside of Facebook.

The company intentionally hides

vital information from the public

from EU S government and from

governments around the world.

The documents I have provided to

Congress prove that Facebook has

repeatedly misled the public about

what its own research reveals

about the safety of

children. The efficacy of its artificial

intelligence systems and its role in

spreading divisive and extreme messages.

I came forward because I believe

that every human being deserves

the dignity of the truth.

The severity of this crisis demands that we

break out of our previous regulatory frames.

Facebook wants to trick you into thinking

that privacy protections or changes to

section 230 alone will be sufficient.

While important,

these will not get to the core of the issue,

which is that no one truly

understands the destructive choices

made by Facebook except Facebook.

We can afford nothing less

than full transparency.

As long as Facebook is operating

in the shadows,

hiding its research from public scrutiny,

it is unaccountable.

Until the incentives change.

Facebook will not change.

Left alone, Facebook will continue

to make choices that go against

the common good our common good.

When we realized big Tobacco

was hiding the harms,

it caused the government took action.

When we figured out cars were safer with

seatbelts, the government took action.

And when our government learned

that opioids were taking lives,

the government took action.

I implore you to do the same here.

Today, Facebook shapes our perception of the

world by choosing the information we see,

even those who don’t use Facebook

are impacted by the majority who do.

A company with such frightening

influence over so many people over

their deepest thoughts, feelings,

and behavior needs real oversight.

But Facebook’s closed design

means it has no real oversight.

Only Facebook knows how it

personalizes your feed for you.

At other large tech companies like Google.

Any independent researcher can

download from the Internet.

The company search results and write

papers about what they find and they do.

But Facebook hides behind walls that

keeps researchers and regulators

from understanding the true dynamics

of their system.

Facebook will tell you privacy

means they can’t give you data.

This is not true.

When tobacco companies claimed that

filtered cigarettes were safer for consumers,

scientists could independently

invalidate these marketing messages.

And confirmed that in fact they posed

a greater threat to human health.

The public cannot do the same with Facebook.

We are given no other option than to

take their marketing messages on blind faith.

Not only does the company hide

most of its own data,

my disclosure has proved that when

Facebook is directly asked questions

as important as how do you impact the

health and safety of our children?

They mislead and they.

They choose to mislead and misdirect.

Facebook has not earned our blind faith.

This inability to see into Facebook’s

actual systems and confirm how they

work is communicated and work as

and confirmed that they work as

communicated is like the Department of

Transportation regulating cars by only

watching them drive down the highway.

Today, no regulator has a menu of

solutions for how to fix Facebook,

because Facebook didn’t want them to know

enough about what’s causing the problems.

Otherwise they wouldn’t.

Otherwise there would have been

need for a whistleblower.

How is the public supposed to

assess if Facebook is resolving

conflicts of interest in a way that

is aligned with the public good?

If the public has no visibility

into how Facebook operates?

This must change.

Facebook wants you to believe that the

problems we’re talking about are unsolvable.

They want you to believe in false choices.

They want you to believe that you

must choose between a Facebook full

of divisive and extreme content,

or losing one of the most important values

our country was founded upon free speech.

That you must choose between

public oversight of Facebook

choices and your personal privacy.

But to be able to share fun photos

of your kids with old friends,

you must also be inundated

with anger driven virality.

They want you to believe that

this is just part of the deal.

I am here today to tell you that’s not true.

These problems are solvable.

A safer free speech respecting more

enjoyable social media is possible,

but there is one thing that I hope

everyone takes away from these disclosures.

It is that Facebook can change but is

clearly not going to do so on its own.

My fear is that without action

divisive and extremist behaviors we

see today are only the beginning.

What we saw in Mian Mar and are now

seen in Ethiopia are only the opening

chapters of a story so terrifying

no one wants to read the end of it.

Congress can change the rules

that Facebook plays by and stop

them any harm that is now causing.

We now know the truth about

Facebook’s destructive impact.

I really appreciate the seriousness

which the members of Congress and the

Securities and Exchange Commission

are approaching these issues.

I came forward at great personal risk.

Because I believe we still have time to act.

But we must act now.

I’m asking you our elected

representatives to act.

Thank you.

Thank you, miss happen.

Thank you for taking that personal risk

and we will do anything and everything

to protect and stop any retaliation

against you in any legal action.

That the company may bring

to bear or anyone else,

and we made that, I think,

very clear in the course

of these proceedings.

I want to ask you about this idea

of disclosure you’ve talked about.

Looking in effect at a car going

down the road and we’re going to have

five minute rounds of questions.

Maybe a second round if you’re

willing to do it.

We’re here today to look under the hood.

And that’s what we need to do more in August.

Senator Blackburn and I wrote to.

Mark Zuckerberg and we asked

him pretty straightforward

questions about how the company.

Works and safeguards children

and teens on Instagram.

Facebook dogs.

Def sidetracked in effect misled us.

So I’m going to ask you a few

straight forward questions to

breakdown some of what you have

said and if you can answer them

yes or no that would be great.

It’s Facebook’s research,

its own research ever found that

its platforms can have a negative

effect on children and teens,

mental health or well being?

Many of Facebook’s internal research

reports indicate that Facebook has a

serious negative harm on a non significant,

not a significant portion of

teenagers and younger and children.

And his Facebook ever offered features.

That it knew had a negative effect.

On children and teens mental health.

Facebook knows that it’s amplification,

algorithms, things like engagement based

ranking on Instagram can lead children from

very innocuous topics like healthy recipes.

I think all of us could eat a little more

healthy all the way from just something

innocent like healthy recipes to anorexia,

promoting content over a

very short period of time.

And has Facebook ever found again

and its research that kids show

signs of addiction on Instagram?

Facebook is studied a pattern

that they call problematic use.

What we might more commonly call addiction,

it has a very high bar for

what it believes it is.

It says you you you self identify that you

don’t have control over usage and that

it is materially harming your health,

your schoolwork or your your physical health.

5 to 6% of 14 year olds have the

self-awareness to admit both those questions.

It is likely that far more than 5

to 6% of 14 year olds are or are

even RR addicted to Instagram.

Last Thursday my colleagues

and I asked Miss Davis,

who was representing Facebook.

About how the decision would have

made whether to pause permanently

Instagram for kids.

And she said,

quote,

there’s no one person who makes

a decision like that.

We think about it that collaboratively.

It’s as though she couldn’t

mention Mark Zuckerberg’s name.

Isn’t he the one who will be making this

decision from your experience in the company?

Mark holds a very unique role in the

tech industry in that he holds over 55%

of all the voting shares for Facebook.

There are no similarly powerful companies

that are as unilaterally controlled and

and in the end the buck stops with Mark.

There is no one hurt currently

holding Mark accountable by himself

and Mark Zuckerberg in effect,

is the algorithm designer in chief correct?

Uhm,

I received an MBA from Harvard and they

emphasize to us that we are responsible

for the organizations that we build.

Mark has built an organization

that is very metrics driven.

It isn’t.

It is intended to be flat.

There is no unilateral responsibility.

The metrics make the decision.

Unfortunately,

that itself is a decision and in the end,

if he is the CEO and the

chairman of Facebook,

he is responsible for those decisions.

The buck stops with him,

but the buck stops with him.

And Speaking of the Bucks stopping.

You have said that.

Facebook should declare moral bankruptcy.

I agree.

I think it’s its actions and its failure

to acknowledge its responsibility.

Indicate moral bankruptcy?

There is a cycle occurring inside

the company where Facebook has

struggled for a long time to

recruit and retain the number of

employees it needs to tackle.

The large scope of projects that is chosen to

take on. Facebook is stuck in

a cycle where it struggles,

struggles to hire that causes

it to understaffed projects,

which causes scandals,

which then makes it harder to hire.

Part of why Facebook needs to come

out and say we did something wrong,

we made some choices that we

regret is the only way we can move

forward and heal Facebook as we

first have to admit the truth.

Like the way we’ll have reconciliation

and we can move forward is by first being

honest and declaring moral bankruptcy.

Being honest and acknowledging

that Facebook has caused.

And aggravated a lot of pain.

Simply make more money.

And it has profited off spreading

disinformation and misinformation

and sowing hate.

Faint Facebook’s answers to

Facebook’s destructive impact

always seems to be more Facebook.

We need more Facebook, which means more pain.

And more money for Facebook.

Would you agree?

I don’t think at any point Facebook set

out to make a destructive platform.

I think it is a challenge of that.

Facebook has set up an organization

where the parts of the organization

responsible for growing and expanding

the organization are separate and not

not regularly cross pollinated with the

parts of the company that focus on the

harms that the company is causing and

as a result regularly integrity actions.

Projects that were hard fought by

the teams trying to keep us safe

are undone by new growth projects.

That counteract those same remedies.

So I do think it’s a thing of their

organizational problems that need

oversight and Facebook needs help

in order to move forward to a more

healthy place.

And whether it’s teens bullied

into suicidal thoughts.

Or the genocide of ethnic minorities and.

Myanmar or fanning the flames that division.

Within our own country or in Europe.

They are ultimately responsible for the.

Immorality of the pain that’s caused.

Facebook needs to take responsibility

for the consequences of its choices

and used to be willing to accept

small trade offs on profit.

And I think I think just that act of

being to able to admit that it’s a

mixed bag is important and I think

that what we saw from Antigone last

week is an example of the kind of

behavior we need to support Facebook

and growing out of,

which is instead of just focusing on

all the good they do admit they have

responsibilities to also remedy the

harm Mark Zuckerberg’s new policy is.

No apologies.

No admissions, no acknowledgement.

Nothing to see here.

We’re going to deflect it and go sailing.

Turn to the ranking member.

Thank you Mr.

Chairman,

thank you for your testimony.

I want to stay with Mr Davis and some

of her comments because I had asked

her last week about the underage

users and she had made the comment.

I’m going to quote from her testimony if

we find an account of someone who’s under 13,

we removed them and the last three

months we removed 600,000 accounts

of under 13 year olds End Quote and.

I have to tell you,

it seems to me that there is a

problem if you have 600,000 accounts

from children who ought not to be

there in the first place.

So what did Mark Zuckerberg know about

Facebook’s plans to bring kids on

as new users and advertise to them?

There are reports within Facebook

that show cohort analysis where

they they examine out what ages do

people join Facebook and Instagram?

And based on those cohort analysis,

so Facebook likes to say children lie

about their ages to get onto the platform.

Reality is enough.

Kids tell the truth that you can

work backwards to figure out what

are approximately the real ages

of anyone who’s on the platform.

One Facebook does cohort analysis

and looks back retrospectively

and discovers things like you know

up to 10 to

15% of even 10 year olds in a given cohort.

Maybe on Facebook or Instagram.

OK, so This is why Adam Moceri,

who’s the CEO of Instagram,

would have replied to JoJo

Siwa when she said to him, oh,

I’ve been on Instagram since I was eight.

He said he didn’t want to know that.

Ah, so it would be for this reason, correct?

A pattern of behavior that I saw at

Facebook was that often problems

were so understaffed that there was

a kind of an implicit discouragement

from having better detection systems.

So, for example, I worked my last team

at Facebook was on the counter espionage

team within the threat Intelligence org,

and at any given time our team

could only handle a third of the

cases that we knew about.

We knew that if we built

even a basic detector,

we would likely have many more cases.

OK, then literally so yeah,

let me ask you this.

So you look at the way that they have

the data, but they’re choosing to keep

that data and advertise from it, right?

You sell it to third parties.

So what does Facebook do?

You’ve got these 600,000 accounts that

ought not to be on there anymore, right?

But then you delete those accounts.

But what happens to that data?

Does Facebook keep that data?

Do they keep it until those

children go to age 13?

Since, as you’re saying,

they can work backward and figure

out the true age of a user.

So what do they do with it?

Do they delete it?

Do they store it? Do they keep it?

How do they process that?

And.

I am my understanding of Facebook’s

data retention policies and

I want to be really clear.

I didn’t work directly on that is

that they delete when they delete an

account they delete all the data.

Then I believe 90 days in compliance

with GDPR I with regard to

children under age on the platform.

Facebook do substantially more to

detect more of those children and

they should have to publish for

Congress those processes because

there are lots of subtleties and

those things and they could be

much more effective than probably

what they’re doing today got it.

Now staying with this underage

children since this hearing is all

about kids and about online privacy.

I want you to tell me.

How Facebook is able to do market

research on these children that are underage?

13 because Mr Davis was really,

she didn’t deny this last week,

so how are they doing this?

Do they bring kids into focus

groups with their parents?

How do they get that permission?

She said they got permission from parents.

Is there a permission slip or a form?

That gets signed and then how do

they know which kids to target?

Uhm, there’s a bunch unpack.

There will start with maybe how

did they recruit children for

focus groups or recruit teenagers?

Most tech companies have systems

where they can analyze the data

that is on their servers,

so most of the focus groups I read

or that I saw analysis of were around

Messenger Kids which has children on it.

And those focus groups appear to

be children interacting in person.

Often large tech companies use

either sourcing agencies that will

go and identify people who meet

certain demographic criteria,

or they will reach out directly based

on criteria data on the platform.

So for example,

in the case of Messenger kids,

maybe you would want to study a

child that was an active user and

one that was less active user.

You might reach out to some that

came from each population and so

these are children that are underage.

13. Yeah. And they know it.

For some of these studies,

and I assume they get,

I assume they get permission,

but I don’t work on that.

OK, well we’re still waiting to

get a copy of that parental consent

form that would involve children.

My time is expired, Mr. Chairman.

I’ll save my other questions for our

second round if we’re able to get those.

Thank you. Thank you.

Senator Blackburn. Senator Klobuchar.

Thank you very much. Mr.

Chairman,

thank you so much.

Miss Hogan for shedding a light

on how Facebook time and time

again has put profit over people.

When their own research found that

more than 13% of teen girls say

that Instagram made their thoughts

of suicide words, what did they do?

They proposed Instagram for kids,

which has now been put on pause

because of public pressure.

When they found out that their

algorithms are fostering polarization

misinformation and hate that they

allowed 99% of their violent contact

to remain unchecked on their platform,

including lead up to the January 6th.

Insurrection why did they do?

They now as we know Mark Zuckerberg is

going sailing and saying no apologies.

I think the time has come for

action and I think you are the

catalyst for that action.

You have said privacy

legislation is not enough.

I completely agree with you,

but I think you know we have

not done anything to update our

privacy laws in this country.

Our federal privacy laws.

Nothing zilch in any major way.

Why?

Because there are lobbyists around

every single corner of this building

that have been hired by the tech industry.

We have done nothing when it comes to

making the algorithms more transparent.

Allowing for the university

research that you referred to.

Why?

Because Facebook and the other

tech companies are throwing a

bunch of money around this town

and people are listening to that.

We have done nothing significantly past

although we are on a bipartisan basis.

Working in the Antitrust subcommittee

to get something done on consolidation,

which you understand,

allows the dominant platforms to

control all this like the bullies

in the neighborhood.

Buyout the companies that maybe

could have competed with them.

And added the bells and whistles so

the time for action is now, so I’ll start.

I’ll start with something that I

asked Facebook’s head of safety when

she testified before us last week.

I asked her how they estimate the

lifetime value of a user for kids

who start using their products

before they turned 13.

She evaded the question and said

that’s not the way we think about it.

Is that right or is it your experience

that Facebook estimates and that

and puts a value on how much money

they get from users in general,

get to kids in a second.

Is that a motivating force for them?

Based on what I saw in terms of

allocation of integrity spending,

so one of the things disclosed in the

Wall Street Journal was that I believe

it’s like 87% of all the misinformation

spending is spent on English,

but only about like 9% of the

users are English speakers.

It seems that that.

Facebook invests more and users

who make them more money even

though the danger may not be evenly

distributed based on profitability.

Does it make sense that having a

younger person get hooked on social

media at a young age makes them

more profitable over the long term

as they have a life ahead of them?

Facebook’s internal documents talk about

the importance of getting younger users,

for example,

tweens onto Instagram like Instagram

kids because they need to have.

Like they know that children bring their

parents online and things like that,

and so they understand the value

of younger users for the long term.

Success of Facebook,

Facebook reported advertising revenue to be

$51.58 per user last quarter

in the US and Canada.

When I asked Miss Davis how much of that

came from Instagram users under 18,

she wouldn’t say do you think that

teens are profitable for their company?

I would assume so based on advertising

for things like television.

You get much substantially higher

advertising rates for customers who

don’t yet have preferences or habits,

and so I’m I’m sure there are some of

the more profitable users on Facebook,

but I do not work directly on that now.

There were major issue that’s

come out of this.

Eating disorders studies have found

that eating disorders actually

have the highest mortality rate

of any mental illness for women,

and I lead a bill on this with senators

capital in Baldwin that we passed into law,

and I’m concerned that this

algorithms that they have.

Pushes outrageous content,

promoting anorexia and the like.

I know it’s personal to you.

Do you think that their algorithms push

some of this content to young girls?

Facebook knows that their engagement

based ranking the way that they

picked the content in Instagram

for young users for all users

amplifies preferences and they have

done something called a proactive,

proactive incident response where they

they take things that they’ve heard,

for example like.

Can you be led by the algorithms

to anorexia content and they have

literally recreated that experiment

themselves and confirmed yes,

this this happens to people.

So Facebook knows that they are

that they are leading young users

to anorexia content.

Do you think they are deliberately

designing their product to be

addictive beyond even that content?

Facebook has a long history of having

a successful and very effective growth

division where they take little

tiny tweaks and then constantly,

constantly,

constantly are trying to optimize it

to grow those kinds of stickiness

could be construed as things that

facilitate addiction, right?

Last thing I’ll ask is we’ve seen this

same kind of content in the political world.

You brought up other countries

and what’s been happening there.

On 60 minutes you said that Facebook

implemented safeguards to reduce

misinformation ahead of the 2020.

Election,

but turned off those safeguards

right after the election.

And you know that the insurrection

occurred January 6.

Do you think that Facebook turned

off the safeguards because they

were costing the company money

because it was reducing profits?

Facebook has been emphasizing a false choice.

They’ve said the safeguards that

were in place before the election

and implicated free speech.

The choices that were happening on

the platform were really about how

reactive and twitchy was the platform,

right?

Like how viral was the platform and

Facebook changed those safety defaults

in the run up to the election because

they knew they were dangerous and

because they wanted that growth back.

They wanted the acceleration of the

platform back after the election.

They they returned to their

original defaults.

And the fact that they had to

break the glass

on January 6th and turn them back on,

I think that’s deeply problematic,

agree, thank you very much for

your bravery in coming forward.

Senator Thune thank you Mr.

Chair and ranking member Blackburn.

I’ve been arguing for some time that it

is time for Congress to act and I think

the question is always what is the correct

way to do it the right way to do it?

Consistent with our First

Amendment right to free speech?

This committee doesn’t have

jurisdiction over the antitrust issue.

That’s the Judiciary Committee,

and I’m not averse to looking at the

monopolistic nature of Facebook.

Honestly, I think that’s a real

issue that needs to be examined

and perhaps addressed as well,

but at least under this

committee’s jurisdiction,

there are a couple of things

I think we can do,

and I have a piece of legislation

and Senators Blackburn and

Blumenthal are both Co sponsors.

Called the filter Bubble Transparency

Act and essentially what it would do

is give users the options to engage

with social media platforms without

being manipulated by these secret

formulas that essentially dictate

the content that you see when you

open up an app or log onto a website.

We also,

I think need to hold big tech

accountable by reforming Section 230

and one of the best opportunities,

I think to do that,

at least for in a bipartisan way,

is the platform accountability

and consumer transparency.

Or the pack pack.

And that’s legislation that I’ve

cosponsored with Senator shots,

which in addition to stripping section

230 protections for content that

a court determines to be illegal,

the Pact act would also increase

transparency and due process for users

around the content moderation process,

and, importantly,

in the context we’re talking about today.

With this hearing with a

major big tech whistleblower,

the PACT Act would explore the

viability of a federal program

for big Tech employees to blow

the whistle on wrongdoing.

Inside the companies where they work,

in my view,

we should encourage employees in

the tech sector like you to speak

up about questionable practices

of big tech companies so we can,

among other things,

ensure that Americans are fully

aware of how social media platforms

are using artificial intelligence

and opaque algorithms to keep

them hooked on the platform.

So let me I miss how we can just ask you.

We’ve learned from the information that

you provided that Facebook conducts

what’s called engagement based ranking.

Which you’ve described is very dangerous.

Could you talk more about why

engagement based ranking is dangerous

and do you think Congress should

seek to pass legislation like the

filter Bubble Transparency Act?

That would give users the ability to

avoid engagement based ranking altogether?

Facebook is going to say you don’t want

to give up engagement based ranking.

You’re not gonna like Facebook as much if

we’re not picking out the content for you.

That’s that’s just not true.

There are a lot of Facebook likes

to present things as false traces

like you have to choose between

having lots of spam like let’s say,

imagine we ordered our feeds by

time like an I message or on

their other forms of social media

that are chronologically based.

They’re going to say you’re gonna

get spent urine spammed like you’re

not going to enjoy your feed.

The reality is that those experiences

have a lot of permutations.

There are ways that we can make

those experiences where computers

don’t regulate what we see.

We together socially regulate what we see,

but they don’t want us to have that

conversation because Facebook knows

that when they pick out there,

the content that we focus on using computers,

we spend more time on their platform.

They make more money.

Uhm, the dangers of engagement based

ranking are that Facebook knows.

That content that elicits an

extreme reaction from you is more

likely to get a click, a comment,

or re share.

And it’s interesting because those

clicks and comments and shares aren’t

even necessarily for your benefit.

It’s because they know that other people

will produce more content if they get

the likes and comments and re shares.

They prioritize content in your

feed so that you will give little

hits of dopamine to your friends,

so they will create more content and

they have run experiments on people,

producers side experiments

where they have confirmed this.

So you,

you and your part of the

information you provided,

the Wall Street Journal.

It’s been found that Facebook altered

its algorithm in attempt to boost these

meaningful social interactions or MSI.

But rather than strengthening bonds between

family and friends on the platform,

the algorithm instead rewarded

more outrage and sensationalism.

And I think Facebook would say that

its algorithms are used to connect

individuals with other friends and

family that are largely positive.

Do you believe that Facebook’s

algorithms make its platform?

A better place for Morris users and

should consumers have the option to use

Facebook and Instagram without being

manipulated by algorithms designed to

keep them engaged on that platform?

I strongly believe like I’ve spent

most of my career working on systems

like engagement based ranking like when

I come to you and say these things.

I’m basically damning 10 years

in my own work, right?

Engagement based ranking.

Facebook says we can do it safely

because we have a I, you know,

the the artificial intelligence will

find the bad content that we know.

Our engagement based ranking is promoting.

They’ve written blog posts on how

they know engagement based rankings,

dangerous,

but the AI will save us.

Facebook’s own research says

they cannot adequately identify

dangerous content and as a result,

those dangerous algorithms that

they admit are picking up the the

extreme sentence, the division.

They can’t protect us from the harms

that they know exist in their own system,

and so I, I don’t think it’s just

a question of saying should people

have the option of choosing to not

be manipulated by their algorithms.

I think if we had appropriate oversight,

or if we were formed 2:30 to make Facebook

responsible for the consequences of

their intentional ranking decisions.

I think they would.

They would get rid of engagement based

ranking because it is causing teenagers

to be exposed to more anorexia content.

It is pulling families apart and

in places like Ethiopia it’s

literally fanning ethnic violence.

Uhm, I encourage reform of these platforms.

Not not picking and choosing

individual ideas, but instead making

the platforms themselves safer,

less twitchy, less reactive, less viral.

’cause that’s how we scalably

solve these problems.

Thank you. Miss Chair,

I would simply say let’s let’s get to work.

So we got some things we can do here.

Thanks, I agree, thank you, Senator.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, ranking member.

Thank you for your courage in coming forward.

Was there a particular moment when

you came to the conclusion that reform

from the inside was impossible and

that you decided to be a whistleblower?

There was a long series of moments

where I became aware that Facebook,

when faced with conflicts of interest

between its own profits and the common good

public safety that Facebook consistently

chose to prioritize its profits.

I think the moment which I realized we

needed to get help from the outside,

that the only way these problems

would be solved is by solving them

together and not solving them

alone was when civic integrity was

dissolved following the 2020 election.

It really felt like a betrayal of the

promises that Facebook can made to

people who had sacrificed a great deal

to keep the election safe by basically

dissolving our community and integrated

and just other parts of the company.

And I know they’re they’re responses that

they’ve sort of distributed the duties.

Yeah, that’s an excuse, right?

Uhm, I I cannot see into the hearts

of other men and I I don’t know

what they let me say it this way.

It won’t work right?

And I I can tell you that when I left

the company so my the people who I

worked with were disproportionately

maybe 75% of my pod of seven people.

Our product managers,

program managers mostly had come

from civic integrity.

All of us left the inauthentic behavior

pod either for other parts of the

company or the company entirely over

the same six week period of time,

so six months after the reorganization,

we had clearly lost faith that

those changes were coming.

You said in your opening statement that

they know how to make Facebook and

Instagram safer, so thought experiment.

You are now.

The chief executive officer

and chairman of the company.

What changes would you immediately institute?

An I would immediately establish a

policy of how to share information and

research from inside the company with

appropriate oversight bodies like Congress.

I would I would give proposed legislation

to Congress saying here’s what an

effective oversight agency would look like.

I would actively engage with academics

to make sure that the people who are who

are confirming our Facebook marketing

messages true have the information

they need to confirm these things.

And I would come immediately implement

the quote soft interventions that were

identified to protect the 2020 election.

So that’s things like requiring someone

to click on a link before re sharing it,

because other companies like Twitter

have found that that significantly

reduces misinformation.

No one is censored by being forced to

click on a link before re sharing it.

Thank you,

I want to pivot back to Instagram’s

targeting of kids.

We all know that they announced a pause,

but that reminds me of what they announced.

When they were going to issue a

digital currency and they got beat

up by EU S Senate Banking Committee

and they said never mind and now

they’re coming back around,

hoping that nobody notices that they

are going to try to issue a currency.

Now let’s set aside for the moment.

This sort of the the business model,

which appears to be gobble up everything.

Do everything.

That’s the gross growth strategy.

Do you believe that they’re actually

going to discontinue Instagram kids?

Or they’re just waiting for the dust?

Settle I. I would be sincerely

surprised if they do not continue

working on Instagram kids and I would

be amazed if a year from now we

don’t have this conversation again.

Why? Facebook understands that if

they want to continue to grow,

they have to find new users.

They have to make sure that that the

next generation is just as engaged

with Instagram as the current one.

And the way they’ll do that is by making

sure that children establish habits

before they have good self regulation

by hooking kids by hooking kids.

I would like to emphasize one of the

documents that we sent in on problematic use.

Examined the rates of problematic use by age,

and that peaked with 14 year olds.

It’s it’s just like cigarettes.

Teenagers don’t have good self regulation.

They say explicitly, I feel bad when

I use Instagram and yet I can’t stop.

Uhm, we need to protect the kids.

Just my final question.

I have a long list of.

Misstatements, misdirections and

outright lies from the company.

I don’t have the time to read them,

but you’re as intimate with

all these deceptions as I am,

so I will just jump to the end.

If you were.

A member of this panel,

would you believe what Facebook is saying?

I would not believe.

Facebook is not earned our right

to just have blind trust in them.

Trust is last week one of the most

beautiful things that I heard on the on.

The committee was trust is earned and

Facebook is not earned our trust.

Thank you.

Thanks Senator Schatz, senator.

Ran and then we’ve been joined by the chair,

Senator Cantwell, she’ll be next.

We’re going to break at

about 11:30 if that’s OK.

’cause we have a vote.

And then we’ll reconvene.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The conversation so far reminds me

that you and I ought to resolve our

differences and introduce legislation.

So as Senator Thune said, let’s go to work.

Our differences are very minor.

Or they seem very minor in the face of

the revelations that we’ve now seen,

so I’m hoping we can move forward.

Senator, I, I share that view, Mr.

Chairman, thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

What examples do you know we’ve talked about,

particularly children?

Teenage girls in specifically?

But what other examples do you know about

where Facebook or Instagram new its

decisions would be harmful to its users?

But still proceeded with the with

the plan and executed those harmful.

That harmful behavior.

Facebooks internal research is aware

that there are a variety of problems

facing children on Instagram that are.

Uh. Her.

They know that severe harm

is happening in children.

For example, in the case of bullying,

Facebook knows that Instagram dramatically

changes the experience of high school.

So when we were in high school

when I was in high school,

most kids looked at me and changed.

Sorry.

We went when I was in high school,

you know,

or most kids have positive home lives like

it doesn’t matter how bad it is at school,

kids can go home and reset for 16 hours.

Kids kids who are bullied on Instagram.

The bullying follows them home.

It follows them into their bedrooms.

The last thing they see before

they go to bed at night is someone

being cruel to them or the first

thing they see in the morning is

someone being cruel to them.

Kids are learning that their own

friends like people who they care

about them are cruel to them.

Like,

think about how that’s going to

impact their domestic relationships

when they become 20 somethings or 30

somethings to believe that people

who care about you are mean to you.

Facebook knows that parents today,

because they didn’t experience these things.

They’ve never experienced this addictive

experience with a piece of technology.

They give their children bad advice.

They say things like,

why don’t you just stop using it and

so that Facebook’s own research is

aware that children express feelings

of loneliness and struggling with

these things because they can’t even

get support from their own parents.

I don’t understand how Facebook

can know all these things and not.

Escalated to someone like Congress

for help and support in navigating

these problems.

Let me ask the question in a in a

broader way besides teenagers or

besides girls or besides youth,

are there other practices at Facebook

or Instagram that are known to

be harmful but yet are pursued?

Uhm?

Facebook is aware that choice isn’t

made in establishing like meaningful

social meaningful social interactions.

So engagement based ranking that didn’t

care if you bully someone or committed hate

speech in the comments that was meaningful.

They know that that change directly changed

publishers behavior that companies like

BuzzFeed wrote in and said the content

is most successful on our platform is

some of the content we’re most ashamed of.

You have a problem with your

ranking and they did nothing.

They know that politicians are

being forced to take positions.

They know their own constituents

don’t like or approve of,

because those are the ones that

get distributed on Facebook.

That’s a huge huge negative impact.

The older people also knows that

they have admitted in public that

engagement based ranking is dangerous

without integrity and security systems,

but then not rolled out those

integrity and security systems to

most of the languages in the world.

And that’s what causing things

like ethnic violence in Ethiopia.

Thank you for your answer.

What is the magnitude of Facebook’s

revenues or profits that come

from the sale of user data?

Oh I’m, I’m sorry I’ve never worked on that.

I’m not aware.

Thank you.

What regulations or legal actions by

Congress or by administrative action do

you think would have the most consequence

or would be feared most by Facebook,

Instagram or Allied companies?

I strongly encourage

reforming Section 232 exempt.

Decisions about algorithms, right?

So?

Modifying 230 around content I think,

has it’s it’s very complicated because

user generated content is something

that companies have less control over.

They have 100% control over their algorithms.

And Facebook should not get

a free pass on choices.

It makes to prioritize growth and virality

and reactiveness over public safety.

They shouldn’t get a free pass on

that because they’re paying for their

profits right now with our safety,

so I strongly encourage reform of 2:30.

In that way.

I also believe there needs to

be a dedicated oversight body,

because right now the only people

in the world who are trained

to analyze these experiments to

understand what’s happening inside

of Facebook are people who,

you know,

grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest.

Or another social media company and

there needs to be a regulatory home where

someone like me could do a tour of duty.

After working at a place like this

and and have a place to work on

things like regulation to bring that

information out to the oversight

boards that that have the right

to do oversight Regulatory agency

within the federal government, yes.

Thank you very much. Thank you, chairman.

Senator Cantwell thank you Mr.

Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing.

And I think my colleagues have brought

up a lot of important issues and so I

think I just want to continue on that vein.

First of all,

the Privacy act that I introduced,

along with several of my

colleagues actually does have FTC

oversight of algorithm transparency.

In some instances, I’d hope you take

a look at that and tell us what other

areas you think we should add to that

level of transparency. But clearly,

that’s the the issue at hand here.

I think in your coming forward.

So thank you again for your

willingness to do that.

The documentation that you say

now we exist is the level of

transparency about what’s going on.

That people haven’t been able to see,

and so your information that you say

is going up to the highest levels at

Facebook is that they purposely knew

that their algorithms were continuing to

have misinformation and hate information.

And that, when presented with

information about this terminology,

you know downstream MSI meaningful social

information knowing that it was this choice.

You could continue this

wrong headed information.

Hate information about the

Rohingya or you could continue

to get higher clickthrough rates.

And I know you said you

don’t know about profits,

but I’m pretty sure you know that on a

page if you click through that next page,

I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more ad

revenue than if you didn’t click through.

So you’re saying the documents exist

that at the highest level at Facebook

you had information discussing

these two choices and that people

chose even though they knew that it

was misinformation and hurtful and

maybe even causing people lives,

they continued to choose profit.

We have submitted documents to

Congress outlining Mark Zuckerberg

was directly presented with a

list of quote soft interventions.

So a hard intervention is like taking

a piece of content on Facebook,

taking a user on Facebook so often

interventions are about making

slightly different choices to make

the platform less viral, less twitchy.

Mark was presented with these options

and chose to not remove downstream MSI.

In April of 2020,

even though he in even just isolated

in at risk countries,

that’s countries at risk of violence.

If it had any impact on the overall

MSI metric.

So he chose which in translation

means less money.

He said right there another reason

why they would do it other than they

thought it would really affect their numbers.

I don’t don’t know for certain

like Jeff Jeff Horowitz.

Report for the Wall Street Journal.

I struggled with us.

We sat there and read these minutes.

And we’re like, how is this possible?

Like we’ve just read 100 pages

on how downstream MSI expands,

hate speech, misinformation,

violence, inciting content,

graphic violent content?

Why won’t you get rid of this?

And we we the best theory that we’ve

come up with and I want to emphasize

this is just our interpretation on it.

Is people’s bonuses are tide to MSI,

right?

Like people,

people stay or leave the company.

On what they get paid and like

if you hurt MSI a bunch people

weren’t going to get their bonuses,

so you’re saying that this practice

even still continues today

like we’re still in this environment.

I’m personally very frustrated by this

because we presented information to

Facebook from one of my own constituents

in 2018 talking about this issue with

Rohingya pleading with the company.

We pleaded with the company and they

continue to not address this issue.

Now you’re pointing out that these

same algorithms are being used,

and they know darn well in Ethiopia

that it’s causing an inciting violence.

And again they are still today choosing

profit over taking this information down.

Is that correct?

When rioting began in the United

States in the summer of last year,

they turned off downstream MSI only for when

they detected content was health content,

which is probably COVID and civic content.

But Facebook’s own algorithms

are bad at finding this content.

It’s still in the raw form.

For 1890% of even that sensitive content

in countries where they don’t have

integrity systems in the language,

local language,

and in the case of Ethiopia,

there are 100 million people

in Ethiopia and six languages,

Facebook only supports two of those

languages for integrity systems.

This strategy of focusing on language

specific content, specific systems,

AI to save us is doomed to fail.

I I need to get to one of the first of all,

I’m sending a letter to Facebook today.

They better not delete any information

as it relates to the Rohingya.

Are investigations about how

they proceeded on this,

particularly on in light of your

information or the documents?

But aren’t we also now talking

about advertising fraud?

Aren’t you selling something to advertisers?

That’s not really what they’re getting.

We know about this because of the newspaper.

Issues were trying to say that

journalism that basically has

to meet a different standard.

A public interest standard

that basically is out there.

Basically proving everyday or

they can be sued.

These guys are a social media

platform that doesn’t have to live

with that and then the consequences.

They’re telling their advertisers

that this was a we see it.

We see it people are coming back to the

local journalism because they’re like

we want to be against with a trusted brand.

We don’t want to be in,

you know your website.

So I I think you’re finding for the SEC.

Is an interesting one,

but I think that we also have to look

at what are the other issues here

and one of them is did you defraud?

Did they defraud advertisers

and telling them this was the

advertising content that you were

going to be advertised again,

when in reality was something different,

was based on a different model.

We have multiple examples of question

and answers for the advertising staff,

the sales staff where advertisers

say after the riots last summer

were asked should we come back to

Facebook or after the instruction?

Like should we come back to Facebook and

Facebook said in their talking points?

That they gave to advertisers.

We’re doing everything in

our power to make this safer

or we take down all the hate

speech when we find it.

But Facebook’s own.

And that was not true.

That was not true.

They get 3 to 5% of hate speech.

Thank you. Thank you Mr.

Chairman.

Thanks Senator cantwell.

And if you wanna make your letter

available to other members of the committee,

I’d be glad to join you

myself and thank you.

Thank you for suggesting it.

Senator Lee thank you. Mr.

Chairman and thank you,

Miss Hogan for joining us this week.

It’s very, very helpful or grateful that

you’re willing to make yourself available.

Last week we had another witness

from Facebook, Miss Davis.

She came and she testified before

this committee and she focused on,

among other things,

the extent to which Facebook

targets ads to children,

including ads that are either sexually

suggestive or geared toward adult

themed products or themes in general.

Now I didn’t, I I well I appreciated

her willingness to be here.

I didn’t get the clearest answers in

response to some of those questions,

and so I’m hoping that you can

help shed some light on some of

those issues related to Facebook’s

advertising processes here.

Today, as we get into this,

I want to first read you a quote that

I got from from Miss Davis last week.

Here’s what she said during

her questioning quote.

When we do ads to young people,

there are only three things that an

advertiser can target around age,

gender, location.

We also prohibit certain as to young people,

including weight loss ads.

We don’t allow tobacco ads at all,

meaning to young people.

We don’t allow them to children.

We don’t allow them to.

Minors close quote.

Now since that exchange happened last week,

there are a number of individuals and groups,

including a group called the

Technology Transparency Project,

or TDP that have indicated that that

part of her testimony was inaccurate,

that it was false.

TDP noted that TDP had conducted

an experiment.

Just last month and their,

their goal was to run a series of ads

that would be targeted to children

ages 13 to 17 to users in the United States.

Now I want to emphasize that PDP

didn’t end up running these ads.

They stopped them from being

distributed to the users,

but Facebook did in fact approved them,

and as I understand it,

Facebook approved them for an

audience of up to 9.1 million users,

all of whom were teens.

So I brought a few of these to show you.

Today this is.

This is the first one I wanted

to showcase this first one as

a colorful graphic.

Encouraging kids to quote throw

a Skittles party like no other.

Which you know, as the graphic indicates,

and as as the slang jargon also

independently suggests this involves.

Kids getting together.

Randomly to abuse prescription drugs.

The second graphic displays an Anna tip.

That is.

A tip specifically designed to

encourage and promote anorexia.

And it’s on there now.

The language,

the anti tip itself.

Independently promotes that the

ad also promotes it insofar as it

was suggesting these are images

you ought to look at when you need

motivation to be more anorexic,

I guess you could say.

Now the third one invites children to

find their partner online and to make

a love connection, you look lonely.

Find your partner now to make a

love connection. Now look at it.

Be an entirely different kettle of fish.

If this were targeted to an adult audience,

it is not targeted to 13 to 17 year olds.

Now obviously I don’t support and and

T DP does not support these messages,

particularly when targeted to

impressionable children and and again,

just to be clear,

TDP did not end up pushing the ads.

Out after receiving Facebook’s approval,

but it did in fact receive

Facebook’s approval.

So I think this says something one could

argue that it proves that Facebook is

allowing and and perhaps facilitating the

targeting of harmful adult themed ads.

To our nation’s children.

So could you please explain to

me Miss Hogan how these ads?

With a target audience.

Of 13 to 17 year old children.

How would they possibly be approved by

Facebook and it is AI involved in that?

Uhm?

I did not work directly on the

ad approval system.

Uhm, what was resonant for me

about your testimony is Facebook.

Has a deep focus on scale so scale

is can we do things very cheaply

for a huge number of people,

which is part of why they rely on AI so much.

It is very possible that none of

those ads were seen by a human and

the reality is that we’ve seen from

repeated documents within my disclosures.

Is that Facebook’s AI systems only

catch a very tiny minority of offending

content and best case scenario in the

case of something like hate speech,

at most they will ever get 10 to 20%.

In the case of children,

that means drug paraphernalia.

Ads like that and it’s likely if they

rely on computers and not humans.

They will also likely never get more

than 10 to 20% of those ads understood.

Mr. Chairman.

I’ve got one minor follow-up question

would should be easy to answer.

So while Facebook may may claim that

it only targets ads based on age,

gender and location, even though.

These things seem to counteract that,

but let’s set that aside for a minute.

And that they’re not basing ads based

on specific interest categories.

Does Facebook still collect interest

category data on teenagers even

if they aren’t at that moment?

Targeting ADS at teens based

on those interest categories,

I think it’s very important to

differentiate between what targeting our

advertisers allowed to specify and what

targeting Facebook may learn foreign add.

Let’s imagine you had some text on an ad.

It would likely extract out features.

That I thought was relevant for that ad.

For example,

in the case of something about partying,

it would learn partying as a concept.

I’m very suspicious that personalized

ads are still not being delivered

to teenagers on Instagram because

the algorithms learn correlations.

They learn interactions where your party

ad may still go to kids interested in

partying because Facebook is is almost

certainly has a ranking model in the

background that it says this person

wants more party related content.

Interesting, thank you,

that’s very helpful.

And what that suggests to me is that while

they’re they’re saying they’re not targeting.

Teens with those ads.

The algorithm might do some

of that work for them,

which might explain why they

collect that data,

even while claiming that they’re

not targeting those ads in that way.

I can’t speak to whether or

not that’s the intention,

but the reality is it’s very,

very very difficult to understand

these algorithms today and

over and over and over again.

We saw these biases,

the algorithms unintentionally learn,

and so yeah,

it it’s very hard to disentangle

out these factors as long as you

have engagement based ranking.

Thank you very much. Senator Lee.

Senator Markey but thank you.

Mr. Chairman very much.

Thank you, Miss Hogan you you

are a 21st century American hero

warning our country of the danger.

For young people.

Or on democracy and our nation owes you.

Just a huge debt of gratitude for the courage

you’re showing here today, so thank you.

Miss Hogan, do you agree that Facebook

actively seeks to attract children

and teens onto its platforms?

On Facebook, actively markets to children or

marketed to children under the age of 18.

To get on Instagram and definitely targets

children as young as eight to be on in

messenger kids and internal Facebook

documents from 2020 that you reveal reads.

Why do we care about twins?

They are valuable but untapped audience,

so Facebook only cares about

children to the extent that they are

a monetary value last week.

Facebook’s global head of safety,

Antigone Davis told me that

Facebook does not allow targeting

of certain harmful content to teens.

Miss Davis stated,

we don’t allow weight loss ads to be

shown to people under the age of 18,

yet a recent study found that Facebook

permitted targeting of teens as

young as 13 with pads that showed a

young woman’s thin waist promoting

websites that glorify anorexia.

Miss Hogan.

Based on your time at Facebook,

do you think Facebook is telling the truth?

I think Facebook has focused on scale

over safety and it is likely that they

are using artificial intelligence to

try to identify harmful ads without

allowing the public oversight to see

what is the actual effectiveness

of those safety systems.

You unearthed Facebooks research about,

it’s hard to teams.

Did you raise this issue with

your supervisors?

I did not work directly on anything

involving teen mental health this research.

Is freely available to anyone in the company.

Mr.

Davis testified last week quote we

don’t allow tobacco ads at all.

We don’t allow them to children either.

We don’t allow alcohol ads to minors,

however.

Researchers also found that Facebook does

allow targeting of teens with ads on vaping.

Miss Hogan, based on your time at Facebook,

do you think Facebook is telling the truth?

I do not have context on that that issue.

I assume that if they are using artificial

intelligence to catch those vape ads,

unquestionably adds or

making its way through.

So from my perspective,

listening to you and your

incredibly courageous revelations,

time and time again,

Facebook says one thing and does another.

Time and time again,

Facebook fails to abide by the

commitments that they had made.

Time and time again.

Facebook lies about what they

are doing yesterday.

Facebook had a platform outage,

but for years it has had a principals outage.

It’s only real principle is profit.

Facebook’s platforms are not safe

for young people.

As you said,

Facebook is like big tobacco

enticing young kids with that,

first cigarettes that first

social media account designed to

hook kids as users for life.

That’s how can you whistle blowing

shows that Facebook uses harmful

features that quantify popularity.

Push manipulative influencer marketing

amplify harmful content to teens.

And last week in this committee Facebook.

Wouldn’t even commit to not

using these features on 10

year olds. Facebook is built on

computer codes of misconduct.

Senator Blumenthal and I.

Have introduced the kids

Internet design and Safety Act.

The kids act.

You have asked us to act as a

committee and Facebook has scores

of lobbyists in the city right now.

Coming in right after this

hearing to tell us we can’t act.

And they’ve been successful for a decade

in blocking this committee from acting.

So let me ask you a question.

The kids Internet design and

Safety Act or the Kids act.

Here’s with the legislation.

Does and includes outright bans

on children’s app features

that one quantified popularity

with likes and follower counts.

Promotes 2.

That two promotes influencer marketing

and three that amplifies toxic posts

and that it would prohibit Facebook

from using its algorithms to promote.

Toxic post should we pass that legislation?

I strongly encourage reforms that push

us towards human scale social media

and not computer driven social media.

Those amplification harms are caused by

computers choosing what’s important to us,

not our friends and family,

and I encourage any system

that children are exposed to to

not use amplification systems.

So you agree that Congress has to

enact these special protections for

children and teens that stop social

media companies from manipulating young

users and threatening their well being.

To stop using its algorithm to harm kids,

you agree with that.

I I do believe Congress must act for

protect children and children and

teens also needed privacy online.

Bill of Rights I’m the author of

the Children’s Online Privacy

Protection Act of 1998,

but it’s only for kids under 13

because the industry stopped me from

making at age 16 and 1998 because it

was already their business model.

But we need to update that law

for the 21st century.

Tell me if this should pass one.

Create an online eraser button so

that young users can tell websites to

delete the data they have collected

about them to give young teens under

the age of 16 and their parents

control of their information and

three ban targeted ads to children.

I support all those actions,

thank you and and finally I’ve also

introduced the algorithmic justice

and online Platform Transparency

Act which would one open the hood

on Facebook and big text algorithms

so we know how Facebook is using our

data to decide what content we see

and to ban discriminatory algorithms.

That harm vulnerable populations

online like showing employment and

housing ads to white people but

not to black people in our country

should Congress pass that bill.

Algorithmic bias issues are a

major issue for our democracy.

During my time at Pinterest,

I became very aware of the challenges

of like I mentioned before,

it’s difficult for us to understand how

these algorithms actually act and perform.

Facebook is aware of complaints today

by people like African Americans

saying that reels doesn’t give African

Americans the same distribution

as white people and and until we

have transparency

and our ability to confirm ourselves.

The Facebook marketing messages are true.

We will not have a system that

is compatible with democracy.

So I and I and I I thank Senator Lee.

I agree with you and your line of questions.

I wrote Facebook asking them to explain

that discrepancy because Facebook I think

is lying about tagging 13 to 15 year olds.

So here’s my message for Mark Zuckerberg.

Your time of invading our privacy,

promoting toxic content

and praying on children.

In teens is over.

Congress will be taking action.

You can work with us or not work with us,

but we will not allow your company

to harm our children and our families

and our democracy any longer.

Thank you. Mr Hogan we will act.

Thanks, Senator Markey,

we’re going to turn to Senator Blackburn

and then. We will take a break.

I know that.

There is some interest in another

round of questions maybe.

Well.

Maybe we’ll turn to Senator Lujan

for his questions before crews

and Scott and we have others,

so we’ll come back after the Mr.

Chairman.

I have to go to sit in the chair

starting at noon today we turn.

I do. I have one question.

This relates to white.

Mr Markey was asking does Facebook

ever employed child psychologist

or mental health professionals

to deal with these children?

Online issues that we’re discussing

Facebook has many researchers with

pH D’s I assume some of them are I.

I know that some have psychology degrees.

I’m not sure if they are child specialists.

Facebook also works with external

agencies that are specialists

at children’s rights online.

Senator Lujan and then,

at the conclusion of Senator

Luhan’s questions,

we’ll take a break.

We’ll come back.

At noon thank you, Mr.

Chairman and I appreciate the

indulgence of the committee.

Miss Hogan. Last week,

the committee heard directly from Miss Davis,

the global head of safety for Facebook.

During the hearing,

the company contested their own.

Internal research as if it does not exist.

Yes or no.

Does Facebook have internal research

indicating that Instagram harms teens,

particularly harming perceptions of

body image which disproportionately

affects young women?

Yes, Facebook has extensive research on

the impacts of its products on teenagers,

including young women.

Thank you for confirming these reports.

Last week I requested Facebook

make the basis of this research.

The data set minus any personally

identifiable information

available to this committee.

Do you believe it is important for

transparency and safety that Facebook

release the basis of this internal research?

The core data set to allow

for independent analysis.

I,

I believe it is vitally important

for our democracy that we establish

mechanisms where Facebook’s internal

research must be disclosed to the

public on a regular basis and that we

need to have privacy sensitive data

sets that allow independent researchers

to confirm whether or not Facebook’s

marketing messages are actually true.

Beyond this particular research

at Facebook make its internal

primary research not just secondary

slide decks of Cherry pick data,

but the underlying data public by default.

Can this be done?

In a way that respects user privacy,

I believe in collaboration with

academics and other researchers that

we can develop privacy conscious

ways of exposing radically more

data that is available today.

It is important for our ability to

understand how algorithms work,

how Facebook shapes the information

we get to see that we have these data

sets be publicly available for scrutiny.

Is Facebook capable of making the

right decision here on its own,

or is regulation needed to create

real transparency at Facebook until

incentives change at Facebook,

we should not expect Facebook to change.

We need action from Congress.

Last week I asked Miss Davis about

shadow profiles for children on

the site and she answered that no

data is ever collected on children

under 13 because they are not

allowed to make accounts.

This tactfully ignores the issue.

Facebook,

who knows children use their platform.

However,

instead of seeing this as

a problem to be solved,

Facebook views this as

a business opportunity.

Yes or no.

Does Facebook conduct research

on children under 13 examining

the business opportunities?

Of connecting these young

children to Facebook’s products,

I want to emphasize how vital it

is that Facebook shaft to publish

the mechanisms by which it tries

to detect these children because

they are on the platform in far

greater numbers than anyone is aware.

I do believe that or I am aware

that Facebook is doing research on

children under the age of 13 and they have.

Those studies are included in my disclosure.

You have shared your concerns about

how senior management Facebook has

continuously prioritized revenue

over potential user Harman safety.

And I have a few questions on

Facebook’s decision making.

Last week I asked Miss Davies quote.

Has Facebook ever found a

change to its platform?

Would potentially inflict harm on users,

but Facebook moved forward because the change

would also grow users or increase revenue.

Miss Davis said in response quote.

It’s not been my experience

at all at Facebook.

That’s just not how we would approach it.

Yes or no? Has Facebook ever found a feature?

On its platform harmed its users,

but the feature moved forward because it

would also grow users or increase revenue.

Facebook likes to paint that these

issues are really complicated.

There are lots of simple issues,

for example,

requiring someone to click through

on a link before you re share it.

That’s not a large imposition,

but it does decrease growth

that tiny little amount,

because in some countries re shares

make up 35% of all the content

that people see Facebook prioritize

that content on the system,

the reachers over the impacts to

misinformation, hate speech or violence,

incitement.

Did these decisions ever come

from Mark Zuckerberg directly or

from other senior management?

At Facebook?

We have a few choice documents that contain

notes from briefings with Mark Zuckerberg,

where he chose metrics defined by

Facebook like meaningful social

interactions over changes that would

have significantly decreased misinformation,

hate speech,

and other inciting content.

And this is the reference you shared

earlier to Miss Cantwell April of 2020.

Facebook appears to be able to count on

the silence of its workforce for a long time,

even as it knowingly continued

practices and policies that

continue to cause and amplify harm.

Facebook content moderators have

called out quote a culture of fear

and secrecy within the company that

prevented them from speaking out.

Is there a culture of fear at

Facebook around whistle blowing

and external accountability?

Facebook has a culture that that that

emphasizes that that insularity is

the path forward that if information

is shared with the public,

it will just be misunderstood.

And I believe that relationship

has to change.

The only way that we will solve

these problems is by solving them

together and we’ll have much better,

more democratic solutions if we do

it collaboratively than in isolation.

And my final question,

is there a senior level executive

at Facebook,

like an Inspector General who’s

responsible for ensuring complaints

from Facebook employees are taken

seriously and that employees legal,

ethical,

and moral concerns received consideration

with the real possibility of

instigating change to company policies.

I’m I’m not aware of that role,

but the company is large and amazing.

I appreciate that.

It’s my understanding that there is a

gentleman of by the name of Roy Austin,

who is the Vice President of Civil Rights,

who’s described himself as

an Inspector General,

but he does not have the authority to

make these internal conflicts public.

The Oversight Board was created

by Facebook to review moderation

policies related to public content.

Specifically, it was not created to

allow employees to raise concerns,

so again, another area of interest.

I believe that we have to act on.

I thank you. For coming forward today.

My pleasure. Happy to serve.

The committee is in recess.

Yeah.

It’s my

old school.

Welcome back, Miss Hogan.

Thank you for your patience.

We’re going to reconvene and

we’ll go to Senator Hickenlooper.

Thank you Mr. Chair thank you,

Miss Hogan, for for your direct answers

and for being willing to come out and,

you know, provide such clarity

on so many of these issues.

Obviously Facebook can manipulate

its algorithms to attract users.

And I guess. My question would be,

do you feel, in your humble opinion,

that you know simply maximizing profits,

no matter the societal impact that is

justified, and I think the question

then would be that that’s the short

question which I think I know the answer.

What impact Facebook’s bottom line

would it have if the algorithm was

changed to promote safety? And two.

Instead of to change to two.

To save the lives of young women

rather than putting them at risk.

Learn about the talk button.

Facebook today.

Has a profit is makes approximately

$40 billion a year in profit.

A lot of the changes that I’m talking

about are are not going to make

Facebook an unprofitable company.

It just won’t be a ludicrously

profitable company like it is today.

Engagement based ranking which causes

those amplification problems that

leads young women from you know,

innocuous topics like healthy recipes

to anorexia content if it were removed,

Facebook people would consume

less content on Facebook.

But Facebook would still be profitable,

and so I I encourage oversight and public

scrutiny into how these algorithms work,

and the consequences of them.

Right well.

And I appreciate that I I’m a

former small business owner I.

Started Brew Pub back in 1988.

And really was always we worked

very hard to to look.

Again,

we weren’t doing investigations,

but we were very sensitive to whether

someone had too much to drink,

whether we had a frequent customer

who was frequently putting

himself at risk and and others.

Obviously,

I think that the Facebook

business model puts.

Well posted risk to to youth and to

enter teens you cared compared to

cigarette companies, which I thought was.

Rightfully so.

If this I guess the question is,

is this level of risk appropriate

or is there a level of risk

that would be appropriate?

I think there is an opportunity to

reframe some of these oversight actions.

So when we think of them as

these trade offs of like it’s

either profitability or safety.

I think that’s a false choice

and then reality.

The thing I’m asking for is

a move from short term ISM,

which is what Facebook is run under today.

Right?

Is being led by metrics and not led by

people and that with appropriate oversight,

and some of these constraints,

it’s possible that Facebook is

actually a much more profitable

company five or ten years down the

road because it wasn’t as toxic.

Not as many people quit it,

but that’s one of those counterfactuals

that we can’t actually test,

so regulation might actually make Facebook

more profitable over the long term.

That’s often the case.

I think the same could be said for

automobiles and go down the list

of all those things that there’s

so much pushback in the beginning.

I also thought that the.

The question of of how do we assess

the impact to their bottom line?

We had a represented Facebook in

here recently who talked about that

eight out of 10 Facebook users feel

their life is better and that their

job is to get to 10 out of 10.

Maybe this is the two to 20%

that they’re missing.

I don’t know how large that the

demographic is of of people that are

caught back up into this circulus,

circuitous you know?

Sense of of really taking them

down into a the wrong direction?

How many people?

That is do you have any idea?

That that quote last week was

really shocking to me because I

don’t know if you’re aware of this,

but in the case of cigarettes only,

about 10% of people who smoke

ever get lung cancer, right?

So the idea that you 20% of your users could

be facing a serious mental health issues,

and that’s not a problem is shocking.

I also want to emphasize for people that

that eating disorders are serious, right?

There are going to be women walking

around this planet in 60 years with

brittle bones because of choices that fit

that Facebook made around emphasizing

profit today or there gonna be women.

Weather in 20 years who want to have

babies who can’t because they’re infertile.

As a result of eating disorders.

Today, they’re serious,

and I think there’s an opportunity

here for having public oversight

and public involvement,

especially in matters that impact children.

Thank you for being so direct on

this and for stepping forward.

I yield back to Florida chair.

Thanks Senator Hickenlooper.

Senator Cruz. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Miss Hogan welcome thank.

Thank you for your testimony.

Uh, when it concerns Facebook?

There are a number of concerns that this

committee and Congress has been focused on.

Two of the biggest had been Facebook’s

intentional targeting of kids with

content that is harmful to the children.

And then, secondly, in a discrete issue,

is the pattern of Facebook and social

media engaging in political censorship?

I want to start with the first

issue targeting kids.

Uhm?

As you’re aware,

it is indeed the documents that

you provided indicated.

Facebook’s quarter the

public reporting on it.

Facebook’s internal reports

found that Instagram makes

quote body image issues worse.

For one in three teen girls,

and additionally,

it showed that quote 13% of British users

and 6% of American users traced their

desire to kill themselves to Instagram.

Uh, is that a fair and accurate

characterization of what

Facebook’s research concluded?

I only know what I read in the documents

that were included in my disclosure,

that is, that is an accurate description

of the ones that I have read.

I because Facebook is not coming for with

the total corpus of their known research.

I don’t know what their other things say.

But yes,

there is documents to say those things,

so we had testimony last week in the

Senate with a witness from Facebook who

claimed that that that information.

Accurate and needed to be in context.

Now, of course she wasn’t

willing to provide the context.

The alleged mysterious context.

Do you know of any context that would

make those data anything other than

horrifying and deeply disturbing?

Uhm,

engagement based ranking and

these processes of amplification.

They impact all users of Facebook.

The algorithms are very smart in the

sense that they latch onto things that

people want to continue to engage with.

And unfortunately in the case of

teen girls and things like self harm,

they develop these feedback cycles

where children are using Instagram

is to self soothe but then are

exposed to more and more content

that makes them hate themselves.

This is a thing where we can’t

say 80% of kids are OK.

We need to say how do we save all the kids?

The Wall Street Journal reported

that Mark Zuckerberg was personally

aware of this research.

Do you have any information one way

or the other as to Mr Zuckerberg’s

awareness of the research,

we have a,

uh,

she’s mean one of the documents

included in the disclosures.

It details something called Project Daisy,

which is an initiative to remove

likes off of Instagram.

The internal research showed they

were moving likes off Instagram

is not effective as long as you

leave comments on those posts.

And yet the research directly

presented to mark.

Zuckerberg said we should still

pursue this as a feature to launch

even though it’s not effective

because the government,

journalists and academics want us

to do this like it would get us

positive points with the public.

That that kind of duplicity is why we

need to have more transparency and why.

If we want to have a system that

is coherent with democracy,

we must have public oversight from Congress.

Do you know if Facebook,

any of the research it conducted,

attempted to quantify how many

teenage girls may have taken their

lives because of Facebook’s products?

I am not aware of that research.

Do you know if Facebook made

any changes when they got back?

That 13% of British users and 6%

of American users traced their

desire to kill themselves to

Instagram? Do you know if they made any

changes in response to that research

to try to correct or mitigate that?

I found it very surprising that

when Antonio Davis was confronted

with this research last week,

she couldn’t enumerate a five point plan.

A 10 point plan of the

actions that they took.

I also find it shocking that one

once Facebook had this research,

it didn’t disclose it to the public.

Because this is the kind of thing that

should have oversight from Congress.

So when you were at Facebook,

where their discussions

about how to respond to this,

this research I did not work directly

on issues concerning children.

These are just documents that were

freely available in the company,

so I’m not aware of that.

Do you have thoughts as to what

kind of changes Facebook could

make to reduce or eliminate these

harms you mentioned earlier?

Concerns around free speech?

A lot of the things that I

advocate for our around changing

the mechanisms of amplification,

not around picking winners and

losers in the marketplace of ideas.

The problems.

So like I mentioned before, you know,

like how on Twitter if you have to

click on a link before you re share it.

Small actions like that friction.

Don’t require picking

good ideas and bad ideas.

They just make the platform less twitchy,

less reactive,

and Facebook’s internal research

says that each one of those small

actions dramatically reduces misinformation,

hate speech and violence,

inciting content on the platform.

So, and we’re we’re running out of time,

but but on the second major

topic of concern of Facebook,

which is censorship based on

what you’ve seen or you are you

concerned about political censorship

at at Facebook and in big Tech?

I believe you cannot have a system that.

Camp Odd has as big an impact on

society as Facebook does today,

with as little transparency as it does.

I I’m a strong proponent of chronological

ranking or ordering by time,

with a little bit of spammed

emotion because I think.

We don’t want computers deciding

what we focus on.

We should have software that is human

scaled or humans have conversations together,

not computers.

Facilitating who we get to hear from.

So how could we get more transparency?

What would produce that?

I strongly encourage the development

of some kind of regulatory body

that could work with academics,

work with researchers,

or with other government agencies

to synthesize requests for data

that are privacy conscious.

This is an area that I’m

really passionate about.

And because right now no one can

force Facebook to disclose data and

Facebook has been stonewalling us.

Or even worse,

they gave inaccurate data

to researchers as they were.

The scandal recently showed what

data should they turn over and

my time is expired so.

For example,

even data as simple as what

integrity systems exist today and

how well do they perform like there

are lots and lots of people who

Facebook is conveying around the

world that that Facebook safety

systems apply to their language,

and those people aren’t aware that

they’re using a raw, original,

dangerous version of Facebook.

Just basic actions like transparency

would make a huge difference.

Thank you.

Thanks, Sandra Cruz,

senator Loomis. Thank you Mr.

Chairman and thank you for your testimony.

If you were in my seat

today instead of your seat,

what documents or unanswered questions

would you seek from Facebook,

especially as it relates to children?

But even generally speaking?

I think any research regarding what

Facebook does problematic use,

IE the addictiveness of the product

is of vital importance and anything

around what Facebook knows about parents

lack of knowledge about the platform.

I only know about the documents

that I have seen, right?

I do not work on teens or

child safety myself,

but in the documents that I read,

Facebook articulates the idea that

parents today are not aware of how

dangerous Instagram is and they

because they themselves do not

live through these experiences.

They can’t coach their kids on

basic safety things and so at a

minimum Facebook shaft to disclose

what it knows in that context.

OK, so we’re trying to protect individuals.

Data that they’re gathering

have data privacy,

but have transparency in the manner in which.

The data is used.

Can we bridge that gap?

Imagine I think we reasonable people

can have a conversation on how many

people need to see a piece of content

before it’s not really private.

Like if 100,000 people see something,

is it private?

If 25,000 people see it, is it private?

Just disclosing the most

popular content on the platform,

including statistics around what

factors went into the promotion of that

content would cause radically more

transparency than we have today on

how Facebook chooses what we get to focus on,

how they shape our reality.

OK,

if if our focus is protecting the

First Amendment and our rights

to free speech while.

Very carefully regulating.

Data privacy.

Uhm?

I’ve heard there there are a number of

things that are being discussed in Congress.

Everything from antitrust laws

to calling Facebook a utility to

the idea that you just raised of

a regulatory board of some sort

that has authority to.

Through understanding of the

algorithms and how they’re used,

and other mechanisms that create what we see

the the the face of Facebook, so to speak.

How to tell me a little more about

how you envision that board working?

What is the in your mind?

Based on your understanding

of the company and the ill?

Consequences?

What is the best approach to bridging

the gap between keeping speech free?

And protecting individual

privacy with regard to data.

So I think those issues are

their independent issues,

so we can talk about free speech first,

which is having more transparency

like Facebook has solutions today

that are not content based and I am

a strong advocate for non content

based solutions because those

solutions will also then protect

the most vulnerable people in the

world in a place like Ethiopia

where they speak six languages.

If you have something that focuses

on good ideas and bad ideas,

those systems don’t work in diverse places.

So investing in non content based

ways to slow the platform down not

only protects our freedom of speech,

it protects people’s lives.

The second question is around privacy

and this question of how can we

have oversight and have privacy?

There is lots and lots of research

on how to abstract data sets so

you’re not showing people’s names.

You might not even be showing

the content of their post.

You might be showing data that

is about the content of their

post but not the post itself.

There are many ways to structure these

data sets that are privacy conscious.

And the fact that Facebook has

walled off the ability to see

even basic things about how the

platform performs or in the case

of their past academic research,

releasing inaccurate data.

Or not being clear about how they pull

that data is just part of a pattern

of behavior of Facebook hiding behind

walls and operating in the shadows,

and they have far too much power

in our society to be allowed to

continue to operate that way.

Well,

I I had heard you make the analogy

earlier to the tobacco industry and I

think that that’s an appropriate analogy.

I.

I I really believe we’re searching for.

The best way to address the problem,

and I’m I.

I’m not sure that it is the heavy

hands like breaking up companies

or calling them a utility.

Which is why your approach of integrating

people who understand the math and the

uses of the math with protecting privacy.

Is intriguing to me, so the more

information that you can provide to us.

About how that might work to

actually address the problem,

I I think would be helpful.

So in my case this is an invitation to you

to provide to my office or the committee.

Information about how we can get at

the root of the problem that you’ve

identified and can document. And.

Save peoples privacy.

So I extend that invitation to you

and I thank you for your testimony.

Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thanks Senator Lummis Senator Sullivan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and.

I want to thank our witness here.

It’s been a good hearing,

a lot of information has been learned.

Particularly on the issue of how

this is impacting our kids, I think.

We’re going to look back.

20 years from now. And.

All of us are going to be like

what in the hell were we thinking

when we recognize the damage

that it’s done to a generation?

Kids, do you agree with that?

Let’s see you again.

When Facebook made statement has made

statements in the past about how

much benefit Instagram is providing

to kids mental health like kids are

connecting who were once alone.

Well, I’m so surprised about that is if

if Instagram is such a positive force,

what have we have?

We seen a golden age of teenage

mental health in the last ten years.

No, we’ve seen escalating opposite.

We’ve seen escalating rates of suicide

and depression amongst teenagers.

It’s.

Or at least in part driven by

the social media phenomenon,

there is a broad swath of research that

supports the idea that usage of social media.

Implies the risk for these

mental health harms right now.

In this hearing is helping illuminated,

we are seeing Facebook’s own

research shows up right say that

again that support and Facebook’s

own research shows that.

Right,

the kids are saying kids are

saying I am unhappy when I use

Instagram and I can’t stop,

but if I leave I’m afraid I’ll be ostracized.

And that’s that’s so sad.

So they know that that’s

what their research shows.

So what do you think drives them to?

I had this discussion with the

witness last week and I said, well.

You know,

I think they called it their

time out or stop, I said,

but isn’t that incompatible

with your business model?

Because your business model

is more time online.

More eyeballs online.

Isn’t that the fundamental

elements of their business model?

Facebook has had both an interesting

opportunity and a hard challenge

from being a closed system,

so they have had the opportunity

to hide their problems.

And like often people do when

they can hide their problems.

They get in over their heads and I

think Facebook needs an opportunity

to have Congress step in and say,

guess what you don’t have to

struggle by yourself anymore.

You don’t have to hide these things from us.

You don’t pretend they’re not problems.

You can declare moral bankruptcy and we

can figure out how to fix these things

together because we solve problems together.

We don’t solve them alone.

And by moral bankruptcy.

One of the things that I appreciate the.

Phrase that the chairman and you’ve

been using is one of those elements.

Which is,

they know this is a problem.

They know it’s actually impacting

negatively the mental health of the

most precious assets we have in America,

our youth, our kids.

I have three daughters.

They know that that is happening

in yet the moral bankruptcy from

your perspective is the continued.

The continuation of this,

simply because that’s how they make money.

I I phrase it slightly differently,

we have financial bankruptcy

because we value people’s lives

more than we value money, right?

The people get in over their heads

and they need a process where they

admit they did something wrong.

But we have a mechanism where

we forgive them and we we have

a way for them to move forward.

Facebook is stuck in a feedback

loop that they cannot get out of.

They have been hiding this information

because they feel trapped, right?

Like they would have come forward if

they had solutions to these things.

They need to admit they did

something wrong and they need help

to solve these problems.

And that’s what moral bankruptcy is.

Let me ask,

I’m going to switch gears

here and in this is.

What’s your current position

right now in terms of its

disinformation and counterespionage?

I my last role at Facebook was in

counter espionage or your last role.

So one of the things this is a very different

topic and only got a minute or so left,

but right now is Facebook.

I know Facebook is not allowed

in countries like China,

but do they provide platforms?

For authoritarian or terrorists base

leaders like the ayatollahs in Iran,

that’s the largest state sponsored

terrorism in the world or the

Taliban or Xi Jinping are certain.

My view, our biggest rival for this century.

A Communist Party dictator who’s

trying to export his authoritarian

model around the world.

Do they provide a platform for those?

Kind of.

Leaders who, in my view,

clearly don’t hold America’s

interests in mind.

This Facebook provided that I I

during my time working with the

threat intelligence org so as a

product manager supporting the threat,

the counter espionage team.

My team directly worked on a tracking

Chinese participation on the platform

surveilling say Uighur populations

in places around the world that you

could actually find the Chinese based

on them doing these kinds of things.

So Facebook,

I’m sorry,

we also saw active participation

of the Iran government doing

espionage on other state actors,

so this is definitely a

thing that is happening.

And I believe Facebook consistent

understaffing of the counter espionage.

Information,

operations and counterterrorism

teams is a national security

issue and I’m speaking to other

parts of Congress about that.

So you are saying, in essence,

that the the platform,

whether Facebook knows it or not,

is being utilized by some of our

adversaries in a way that helps push

and promote their interests at the

expense of America’s very aware that

this is happening on the platform.

And I believe the fact that Congress

doesn’t get a report of exactly how

many people are working on these

things internally is is unacceptable

because you have a right to keep.

American people safe.

Great, thank you very much.

Thanks center Salvin.

You may have just opened.

An area for another hearing.

Yeah,

I’ve I’ve I’ve strong national security

concerns about how Facebook operates today.

Well, Mr.

Chairman.

Maybe we should write.

I mean, it’s, uh,

I’m not being at all facetious.

Thank you for your questions on this topic,

and I know you have a busy schedule,

but we may want to.

Discuss this issue with you

members of our committee,

at least informally,

and if you’d be willing to

come back for another hearing.

That certainly is within

the realm of possibility.

I haven’t consulted the ranking member,

but or the chair.

Woman but.

Thank you for your honesty

and your candor on that topic.

Senator Scott

thank you chairman First off,

thanks for coming forward and thanks

for coming forward in a manner that you

want to have a have positive change.

So it’s not always what happens early.

Earlier this year I sent letter to Facebook

and other social media platforms asking

them to detail the harmful impacts.

Could effects our mental health their

platforms have on children and teens.

So your reports revealed that Facebook

has been clued fully aware of this

for awhile and the harmful impacts,

especially on young women,

so I think we all agree that’s

completely unacceptable and we’ve got

to figure out how we protect the people

that are vulnerable in this country

from the harmful impacts of Facebook

and other social media platforms.

So First off, do you think there should be?

Greater consideration for age when

it comes to using any social media.

I strongly encourage raising age

limits to 16 or 18 years old based on

looking at the data around problematic

use or addiction on the platform and

children’s self regulation issues.

So, so I think you addressed this

a little bit,

but why do you think Facebook didn’t

address this publicly when they they

figured it out internally that they

were having an adverse impact on young

young people, especially young women?

Why didn’t they come forward and

say I’ve got it?

We’ve got a problem.

We gotta figure this out.

I have a huge amount of empathy

for for Facebook.

These are really,

really hard questions and part of why

I’m saying I think I think they feel

a little a little trapped and isolated

is the problems that are driving

negative social comparison on Instagram?

Facebook’s own research says Instagram

is actually distinctly worse than

say tick Tock or Snapchat or Reddit

because Instagram tick tock is about

doing fun things with your friends.

Snapchat is about faces and

augmented reality.

Reddit is vaguely about ideas,

but Instagram is about bodies

and about comparing lifestyles.

And so I think there are real questions

where like Instagram would have to come

in and think hard about their product.

Or about like what is their product about.

And I think I don’t think those

answers are immediately obvious.

But that’s why I believe we need to

solve problems together and not alone.

Because collaborating with the

public will give us better solutions.

So do you think Facebook was trying

to try and mitigate the problem?

I think within the set of incentives

that they were working within,

they did the best they could.

Unfortunately, those incentives

are not sustainable and they are

not acceptable in our society.

Do you think Facebook and other social

media platforms ought to be able to

be required to report any harmful

effects they have on young people?

One of the things that I found very

interesting after the report in the

Wall Street Journal on Teen Mental

Health was that a former executive

at the company said Facebook needs

to be able to have private research

and the part that I was offended by

this was Facebook has had some of

this research on the negative effects

of Instagram on teenagers for years.

I strongly support the idea that Facebook

should have a year maybe 18 months,

to have private research,

but given that they are the only people

in the world who can do this kind of

research that the public never gets to do it?

They shouldn’t be allowed to keep secrets

when people’s lives are on the line.

So because because to be clear,

if they make $40 billion a year,

they have the resources

to solve these problems,

they’re choosing not to solve them.

Yeah, did that surprise you?

They wouldn’t put more effort into this.

No, you know it’s going to catch

up with him eventually, right?

Yeah, like I mentioned earlier,

to write coming in and having

oversight might actually make

Facebook a more profitable company

five or ten years from now,

because toxicity,

Facebook’s own research shows they have

something called an integrity holdout.

These are people who don’t get

protections from integrity systems to

see what happens to them and those

people who deal with a more toxic,

painful version of Facebook.

Use Facebook less,

and so one could could could reason a kinder,

friendlier,

more collaborative Facebook might actually

have more users five years from now,

so it’s in everyone’s interest.

Do you think I’ve got a bill

and there’s a lot of bills that

I think we’ve all talked about,

but mine is called the Data Act.

It’s going to require express consent

from users for large platforms

to use algorithms on somebody.

You agree with that.

I mean,

shouldn’t we consent before they

get to take our everything about

us and go sell it?

Allison,

thanks to us for for selling

personal data that that is an issue.

I believe people have chef

substantially more control over.

Most people are not well informed

on what the cost, the cost,

personal costs of having their data sold are,

and so I worry about pushing that

choice back on individual consumers

in terms of should people consent

to working with algorithms.

I worry that if Facebook is allowed

to give users the choice of do you

want an engagement based news feed

or do you want a chronological

newsfeed like ordered by time,

maybe a little spammed emotion that

people will choose the more addictive

option that engagement based ranking

even if it is leading their their

their daughters to eating disorders.

Right, thank you.

Thanks Senator Scott.

I think we have concluded the first round.

Unless we’re missing someone who is.

On line. And not hearing anyone.

Let’s go to the second round.

Thank you again for your patience.

I know you have a hard stop.

I think at 1:30 so will be respectful

of that limitation and I’ll

begin by asking a few questions.

First, let me say.

Senator Klobuchar very aptly.

Raised with you the principle

obstacle to our achieving legislative

reform in the past,

which is the tons of money spent

on lobbyists and other. Kinds of.

Influence peddling.

Use a pejorative word that is so

evident here in the United States Congress.

Some of its dark money,

some of it is very overt.

But I guess the point I’d like to

make to you personally is that

you’re being here.

Really sends a profound message to.

Our nation,

that one person can really make a difference.

One person standing up speaking out.

And overcome a lot of

those obstacles for us,

and you have crystallized.

In a way our. Consciousness

here you have been a catalyst,

I think for change in a way that

we haven’t seen and I’ve been

working on these issues for.

1015 years and you have raised awareness

in a way that I think is very unique.

So thank you not only for your

risk taking and your courage

and strength and standing up,

but also for the effect that it has had.

And I also want to make another point and

you can tell me whether I’m correct or not.

I think there are other

whistleblowers out there.

I think there are other truth tellers.

In the tech world.

Want to come forward and I think you are.

Leading by example. I think you are

showing them that there is a path.

To make this industry more responsible.

And. More caring about kids.

And about the nature of our public

discourse generally are about the strength

of our democracy, and I think you.

Have given them boost those whistleblowers

out there and potentially coming forward.

I think that’s tremendously

important I think also.

And again, you can tell me if I’m wrong.

There are a lot of people on

Facebook who are cheering for you.

Because.

There are public reports

and I know of some of my.

Friends in this world who tell me that.

There are people working for

Facebook who wish they had.

The opportunity and the courage to come

forward as you have done because they feel.

A lot of reservations about the way

that Facebook has used the platform,

used algorithms used content

and pushed it on.

Kids in this way. So those are.

Sort of hypothesis.

That I hope you can confirm.

And I also would like to ask you.

’cause a lot of parents

are watching right now.

So you’ve advised us on what you

think we should do the reforms.

Some of them that you think we

should adopt stronger oversight.

Authorized by Congress.

Better disclosure because right now.

Facebook essentially is a black box.

Yes, for most of America,

Facebook is a black box.

That’s designed by Mark Zuckerberg,

incorporated.

Mark Zuckerberg and his immediate coterie.

And the buck stops with him.

And reform of Section 203.

So there’s some legal responsibility.

So people have a day in court,

some kind of recourse.

Legally, when they’re harmed by Facebook

because right now it has this broad immunity,

most of America has no idea.

Essentially, you can’t sue Facebook.

You have no recourse.

Most America doesn’t know about section 230.

And if you.

Pushed a lot of members of Congress,

they wouldn’t know either.

It’s actually slightly worse than that.

They Facebook made a statement in a

legal proceeding recently where they

said they had the right to mislead

the court because they had immunity.

Right that 2:30 give them immunity,

so why should they have to tell the

truth about what they’re showing?

Which is kind of shocking?

Well, it is shocking to a lawyer.

Of us are it’s also uttered.

Disregarding contempt for the rule of law,

and for the very legal

structure that gives them.

That kind of protection,

so it’s kind of a new low.

In corporate conduct,

at least in court.

So you’ve you’ve provided us with some of

the reforms that you think are important,

and I think that the oversight goes a long

way because it in turn would make public a

lot of what is going on in this black box.

But for now. Since a lot of teens and

tweens will be going home tonight,

as you’ve said. To endure the bullying.

The eating disorders.

The invitations to.

Feel insecure about themselves.

Heightened anxiety they have to live

with the real world as it exists right

now and they will be haunted for

their lifetimes by these experiences.

What would you tell parents right now?

What would you advise them?

About what they can do because they

need more tools and some of the

proposals that have been mentioned

here would give parents more tools

to protect their children.

Right now, a lot of parents tell me.

They feel powerless.

They need more information their way behind

their kids and their adeptness online.

And they feel that they need

to be empowered in some way to

protect their kids in the real

world right now in real time.

So I offer you that open-ended

opportunity to.

Talk to us a little bit about your thoughts.

Very rarely do you have one of

these generational shifts where the

generation that leads like parents who

who who who guide their children have

such a different set of experiences

that they don’t have the context to

support their children in a Safeway.

There is an active need for schools

or or maybe the National Institutes

of Health to to make established

information where if parents want to

learn on how they can support their kids.

It should be easy for them to know what

is constructive and non constructive

because Facebook’s own research

says kids today feel like they are

struggling alone with all these

issues because their parents can’t

guide them and one of the things I’m

I’m sad is when I look on Twitter

is when people blame the parents

for these problems with Facebook.

They say just take your kids phone away.

And the reality is,

those issues are long and so we need

to support parents because right now

if Facebook won’t protect the kids,

we at least need to help the

parents to protect the kids.

If A at parents are anguished,

they are about this issue, parents or hardly.

Uncaring,

they need the tools they need to

be empowered. And I think that the.

The major encouragement for reforms is

going to come from those parents and.

You have pointed out,

I think in general,

but I’d like you to just confirm for me.

This research and the documents

containing that research.

Is not only findings and conclusions also.

Recommendations for changes.

What I hear you saying is that, again,

and again and again these recommendations

were just rejected or disregarded, correct?

There is a pattern of behavior that I

saw at Facebook, a Facebook choosing

to prioritize its profits over people.

And anytime the Facebook faced even tiny

hits to growth like .1% of Sessions,

1% of of views that it shows its profits

over safety and you mentioned I think

bonuses tide to downstream MSI’s decor.

Explain what you meant,

so MSI is meaningful social interaction.

Facebook’s internal governance is

very much based around metrics,

so Facebook is incredibly flat to

the point where they have the largest

open floorplan office in the world.

It’s a quarter of a mile long in one room,

right?

They believe in flat.

And instead of having internal governance,

they have metrics that people try

to move in a world like that,

it doesn’t matter that we now

have multiple years of data.

Saying MSI may be encouraging bad content

might be making spaces where people

are are scared where they are shown

information that puts them at risk.

It’s so hard to dislodge a ruler like that,

that a yardstick.

That you end up in this situation

where because no one is taking

leadership like no one is intentionally

designing these systems.

It’s just many,

many people running in parallel,

all moving the metric that these problems

get amplified and amplified and amplified,

and no one steps into to bring the solutions.

And I just want to finish and then I

think we’ve been joined by Senator Young.

And then we’ll go to Senator

Blackburn and Senator Klobuchar.

You know I spent a number of years

as an attorney general, helping to

lead litigation against Big Tobacco.

And. I came to hear from a lot of.

Smokers, how grateful they were.

Ironically and unexpectedly that someone

was fighting big tobacco because they

felt they had been victimized as children.

They started smoking when they were 7/8.

12 years old because Big

Tobacco was hooking them.

And as we develop the research very

methodically and purposefully.

Addicting man. At that early age,

when they. Believed.

That they would make themselves more popular.

That they would be cool and hip if they.

Began smoking and then nicotine.

Hooked them now, physiologically, nicotine.

Has addictive properties.

What is it about Facebook’s tactics?

Of hooking young people. That makes it

similar to what big Tobacco has done.

Facebook’s own research about Instagram.

Contains quotes from kids saying.

I feel bad when I use Instagram,

but I also feel like I can’t stop right.

I I know that the more time I spend on this,

the worse I feel.

But like I just can’t like

that they want the next click.

They want the next like they

they the the the dopamine.

You know the little hits all the time and.

I I feel a lot of pain for those kids, right?

Like they they they say they

fear being ostracized if they

step away from the platform.

So imagine you’re in this situation in

this relationship where every time you

open the app it makes you feel worse.

But you also fear isolation.

If you don’t,

I think there’s a huge opportunity here to

make social media that makes kids feel good,

not feel bad and that we have an

obligation to our youth to make

sure that they’re safe online.

Thank you,

Senator Young.

Jenn. Thank you for your

compelling testimony.

In that testimony, you discuss how Facebook

generates self harm and and self hate,

especially among vulnerable

groups like teenage girls.

I happen to be a father of four kids,

three daughters, two of whom are teenagers,

and as you as you just alluded to,

most adults, myself included.

I’ve never been a teenager during

the age of Facebook, Instagram and

these other social media platforms.

And therefore I think it can be really

hard for many of us to fully appreciate

the impact that certain posts may have.

Including I would add on

the team’s mental health.

So can you discuss the short and long

term consequences of body image issues?

On these platforms, please.

The patterns that children establish

in their teenage years lived with

them for the rest of their lives.

The way they conceptualize who they are,

how they conceptualize,

how they interact with other people

are patterns and habits that they will

take with them as they become adults

as they themselves raise children.

I’m very scared about the

upcoming generation because.

When you and I interact in person

and I say something mean to you and

I see you wins or I see you cry.

That makes me less likely to

do it the next time, right?

That’s a feedback cycle.

Online kids don’t get those cues and

they learn to be incredibly cruel to

each other and they normalize it.

And I’m scared of what will

their lives look like,

where they grow up with the idea that

it’s OK to be treated badly by people

who who allegedly care about them.

That’s a scary future.

Very scary future.

And I see some evidence of

that as to so many parents.

Come on a on a regular basis or

are there other specific issues of

significant consequences that the

general public may not be fully aware

of that are impacting vulnerable

groups that you just like to elevate?

During this testimony.

One of the things that’s hard.

People who don’t look at the data

of social networks everyday it

can be hard to conceptualize the

distribution patterns of harms

or just of usage that there are

these things called power laws.

It means that a small number of

users are extremely intensely

engaged on any given topic,

and most people are just lightly engaged.

When you look at things like misinformation,

Facebook knows that the people who are

exposed to the most misinformation

are people who are recently widowed,

divorced,

moved to a new city,

are isolated in some other way.

When I worked on civic misinformation,

we discussed the idea of the

misinformation burden,

like the idea that when people

are exposed to ideas that are

not true over and over again,

it erodes their ability to to

connect with the community at large

because they no longer adhere to

facts that are consensus reality.

The fact that Facebook knows that

is most vulnerable users people who

recently widowed like that they’re isolated,

that that the systems that are

meant to keep them safe like

demoting misinformation.

Stop working when people look

at 2000 posts a day.

Right and I just it breaks my heart.

The idea that these rabbit holes

would suck people down and then

make it hard to connect with others.

So Miss Miss Hodge and I desperately want to,

which is the American impulse?

I want to solve this problem and I.

I very much believe that

Congress not only has a role,

but has a responsibility to figure this out.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

I would value your opinion though as

to whether you believe that breaking

up Facebook would solve any of the

problems that you’ve discussed today.

Do you think it would?

So as an algorithmic specialist,

so this is someone who designs

algorithmics experiences.

I’m actually against the breaking

up of Facebook because even looking

inside of just Facebook itself,