Joined by video, Frances Haugen takes stock of a year after her sensational revelations. She is alarmed at the rise of TikTok while touting the implementation of ambitious legislation in the European Union.
Challenges – What is happening now for you, after having been in great demand at the time of your Revelations on Facebook’s practices?
Franks Haugen – During the first 6 months after Facebook, I worked on the development of the “Digital Services Act” (DSA) in Europe. It was adopted last July. It is historic, it is the most successful legislation to date to control platforms. I now want to teach “data science”. We learn this today in a super artificial way. But in reality, questions must be asked: for whom are the technological options chosen beneficial? I met students in a dozen universities, in the United States, or in England as well, in order to build the idea that we can teach differently.
From now on, with my NGO and Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty, we want to build alternative collaborative solutions to GAFA. Today, people who understand the problems created by social networks do not understand the technical implications. Often the problems are related to minors. Often, people think that it is just necessary to control the identity card of the users. In reality it doesn’t work, there are a lot of side effects. Other solutions exist. They are numerous and simpler. Or, we choose not to use them.
Do you think the regulation of social networks is improving?
All major industries in the world have a high degree of transparency except social media. Why few scandals come from Apple? Because they don’t have much interest in lying. In traditional industry, suppliers must be known for manufactured products. Behind the screen, you can’t really know what’s going on.
When scandals related to Facebook break out, the group apologizes and claims that these episodes are not representative of their activity. Now, thanks to me, we have proof that Facebook lied. And for the first time, the European Union via the DSA can ask questions.
The question of regulation also arises from the point of view of the languages followed and spoken by the moderators of Facebook and the platforms. Today, we don’t know. I have this discussion with many world leaders. The DSA will make it possible to arrange this transparency.
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Does Meta’s response to the issues you’ve reported for Facebook and Instagram measure up?
Facebook has launched the “No Language left behind” program in order to widen the recognized range of languages. It’s not enough but it’s better than what was done before. On the protection of children on Instagram, they have also launched a few initiatives. The problem is that TikTok still exists and the problems are similar there. The narrative of Tech companies changes so quickly that we can say that if in 2 years, we haven’t done anything, then it’s useless. In reality the profound changes smoking 10 years.
What will this increase in the transparency of social networks allow?
Things are improving. Transparency will change things. The boycott of advertisers in the United States is a market. Facebook was forced to address hate speech issues. The DSA will change things when we get the data. In the automotive industry, a book came out in 1965: “Dangerous at any speed”. Why was this book released? This was possible because the author studied 100 serious accidents. There are many simple things that can be achieved if you increase transparency. With social networks and digital, it’s the same thing.
Beyond transparency, there are already tools available to platforms to reduce their impact
We’ve known it for 30 years, even before the existence of social networks: if your service is lent more, people will use it less. Or, at Google, when I worked for them, they were obsessed with finding a 5 millisecond boost in search engine performance. Another example. You can use a notification on Youtube alerting you when to sleep. Or, you can remove it and… continue to use the platform. Another case with Instagram: if you are 18, you can choose the time you want to go to bed. You say 11 o’clock in the evening for example. And well after this time the performance of the application remains the same. Or, if it slowed down, the user would let go more easily.
This feature already exists! It is used by Instagram when there is a suspicion of data theft. Meta can complete and generalize this feature in a week if it wants. And it’s not a Chinese-style solution where it would be easy to simply cut off access to the app at a given time. What drives me crazy is that many problems for teenagers generated by social networks can be solved. In reality, Facebook chose to do nothing.
All algorithms push people into dead ends. They talk to show you what you are reacting to. I was pregnant for weeks before losing a baby. I keep seeing baby videos when it’s completely irrelevant.
Is the rise of TikTok not making the situation worse?
It is extremely dangerous. My scathing criticisms of Facebook are even more true for TikTok. The Chinese do not have a culture that promotes diversity. When I talk to people at TikTok, for now we’re protected from a lot of consequences because their stream of videos consumes a lot of data and can’t easily be stored for long. In Kenya, violence has already been facilitated by TikTok, because obviously no one speaks Swahili.
They have the power to editorially encourage what works. Videos with music and dance are of course highlighted today. TikTok is integrated so that it can be easily censored. They manage today to have 80% of the audience which comes from a hundred videos per day. It’s very convenient because they can easily watch and moderate them with humans.
What will change the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk?
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was excited because I thought he would at least succeed in stopping the bots on the social network. This is one of the most dangerous things on the platforms, because they are very easily used by China, Russia, or Iran, or even groups in society. This quickly creates the illusion that a movement is shared by many citizens. I have a friend who uses bots to challenge Chinese accounts. Well those fake accounts don’t work anymore, so on that we can at least say that he really disabled a lot of fake automated accounts.
On hate speech at work on Twitter, it’s a problem of moderation that doesn’t work. We agreed to be the subjects of these platforms. We have to follow the rules or we just leave the platforms. We can imagine that authorized users change the rules of these social networks.
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