Mark Zuckerberg.Photo: AMY OSBORNE/Getty
In over 1,300 words, Facebook CEOMark Zuckerbergresponded to whistleblowerFrances Haugen’s claim that the company ignored data showing its apps were harmful to users.
Zuckerberg, 37, posted hisletteron Tuesday night, just hours after Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, testified before a Senate Commerce subcommittee and alleged that the company frequently chose to put “profits over people,” according to CNN.
“Now that today’s testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we’re in,” Zuckerberg wrote in his letter after addressing theworldwide outages that affected Facebookservices on Monday. “I’m sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn’t reflect the company we know. We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health.”
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“At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” he continued.
Over the weekend, Haugan appeared on60 Minutesto reveal she was behind the leaked company documents that were given to lawmakers and became the source of aWall Street Journalexposé on Facebook.
“When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content, it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other,” she told60 Minutes. “The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”
Zuckerberg responded to some of the allegations in his letter.
“Many of the claims don’t make any sense,” he wrote. “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? If we didn’t care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space — even ones larger than us?”
He added: “If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we’re doing? And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?”
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Zuckerberg, who founded the company in 2004 with a group of fellow Harvard University students, also shot back at claims that it intentionally promoted content that made people angry.
“The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical,” Zuckerberg said. “We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don’t want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed. The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction.”
After Haugan’s testimony, both Democrat and Republican lawmakers agreed there was a need for new regulations to change how Facebook targets its users, according to theAssociated Press.
“Our differences are very minor, or they seem very minor in the face of the revelations that we’ve now seen,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. “I’m hoping we can move forward.”
source: people.com
