Former Facebook Employee Tells Congress That Social Network “Harms Children and Undermines Our Democracy”

A whistleblower of Facebook appeared before US lawmakers on Tuesday to call for the social media giant to be regulated, a day after a massive blackout affected billions of users and revealed global dependence on its services.

Former employee of the social network Frances Haugen testified on Capitol Hill after leaking to authorities and The Wall Street Journal a huge file of internal investigations detailing the youth.

Haugen spoke to senators a day after Facebook, his photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp were down for about seven hours, according to tracker Downdetector.

Haugen warned in a pre-prepared speech of the risk of not creating new safeguards for a platform that reveals little about how it works.

“I believe that Facebook products harm children, fuel division and weaken our democracy”, he stressed. This crisis will not be solved without your help ”.

In his testimony, Haugen points out the danger of power in the hands of a service that has become necessary in the daily lives of so many people.

“The company intentionally withholds vital information from users, the US government, and governments around the world.” indicated Haugen’s statement. “The severity of this crisis requires that we get out of our previous regulatory frameworks.”

Facebook has strongly opposed outrage over its practices and their impact, but this is just the latest in a series of crises to hit the Silicon Valley giant.

and other social media platforms to address criticism that tech giants invade privacy, serve as a megaphone for dangerous misinformation and harm the well-being of young people.

After years of strong criticism of social networks, without major legislative revisions, some experts were skeptical of the possibility of a change from Congress.

“It will have to come from the platforms, which feel pressure from their users and their employees”, Mark Hass, a professor at Arizona State University, told AFP.

“I love Instagram”

Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, has worked for companies like Google and Pinterest, but – in an interview Sunday with CBS news program “60 Minutes” – said that everything she had seen .

Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and politics, Nick Clegg, vehemently rebutted Facebook’s claim that its platforms are “toxic” to teens, days after a tense, multi-hour hearing in Congress in which US lawmakers questioned the company about its

Late on Monday, Facebook blamed the blackout on configuration changes it made to the routers that coordinate network traffic between its data centers.

“This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, causing our services to stop,” Facebook’s VP of Infrastructure Santosh Janardhan said in a post.

In addition to the blackout for people, businesses and others who depend on the company’s tools, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg,

The Fortune billionaire web tracker indicated late Monday that Zuckerberg’s personal fortune dropped by nearly $ 6 billion from the previous day, to just under $ 6 billion.

Some people were glad that Facebook tools were down, but others complained that the outage caused them professional and personal problems.

“I love Instagram. It is the application that I use the most, especially for my work ”, Millie Donnelly, a network administrator for a non-profit organization, told AFP.

“So professionally, it’s definitely a step backwards. And then personally, I’m just always on the app. “

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