Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen alleges social network 'making hate worse'

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told the UK lawmakers on Monday, October 25, that the social media giant will fuel more violent unrest across the globe as the algorithms of the platform are designed to promote divisive content. As per The Associated Press report, in the latest blow for Facebook, Huagens testified in front of the British Parliamentary committee looking into the online safety legislation. She claimed that the social network witnessed the safety as a cost centre and hyped the start-up culture where cutting corners was better. She added that Facebook was “unquestionably” making hate worse. 

Most of her claims echoed most of what she told the United States Senate earlier this month. The Facebook whistleblower told the UK lawmakers that Facebook Groups amplifies online hate by pushing the people with mainstream interests to the extremes. Haugen, who is a former Facebook data scientist, said that the company could add moderators to prevent the groups from growing beyond a certain size to limit the spread of extremist views. 

Haugen said, “Unquestionably, it’s making hate worse” adding that she was “shocked to hear recently that Facebook wants to double down on the metaverse and that they’re gonna hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse.” She referred to the company’s plans for an immersive online world that it believes will be the next big trend on the internet.

“I was like, ‘Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?’” she said. 

Facebook said it ‘almost halved’ hate speech

Meanwhile, Facebook said on Monday that it wants regulation for tech companies and was glad that the UK was leading the process. In a statement, as per AP, the social network said, “While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we agree we need regulation for the whole industry so that businesses like ours aren’t making these decisions on our own.”

Additionally, Facebook has also drawn attention to investing  $13 billion (9.4 billion pounds) on safety and security since 2016. The company has also underscored that it has “almost halved” the amount of hate speech over the last three quarters. But, Haugen has accused Facebook-owned Instagram of failing to prevent children under 13 from opening accounts on its platform. 13 is the minimum user age for Instagram but the Facebook whistleblower said that the company was not doing enough to protect the kids from the content such as the one that makes them feel bad regarding their bodies.

Image: AP/Unsplash

With inputs from AP