US Senators have come to the defense of Facebook following its parent company Meta’s rebranding to Meta. This was in response to Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to distance Facebook from its mounting scandals.
Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, made damning allegations about the social media platform.
Just days after Haugen testified that Facebook puts safety above safety and does not crack down on hate speech, Zuckerberg made the announcement at the Facebook Connect augmented reality conference.
Meta is Zuckerberg’s vision of the company’s transition to shared augmented reality where users can work and play in virtual worlds.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response: ‘Meta as in ‘we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a fellow Democrat, stated: ‘You may run, but you cannot hide, Facebook.
‘A new nom de plume may confuse & distract, but won’t erase years of devious practices & disregard for privacy, kids’ wellbeing, spreading hate, & genocide.’
US Senators have called for Facebook’s parent company to be rebranded as Meta. Mark Zuckerberg attempts discredit the tech giant from its mounting scandals.
After the controversial name change, the social media platform was labeled a ‘cancer’ by politicians as it attempted to ‘confuse’ and distract the public.
Senator Ed Markey said that while Facebook wants us to call it Meta, we won’t. We’ll just keep calling it what is, a threat, to privacy, democracy and children.
Jack Dorsey (the CEO of Twitter), was Zuckerberg’s opponent. He tweeted: “BIG NEWS lol.jk still Twitter.”
After the rebrand to build the ‘metaverse’, share of Meta Platforms Inc rose marginally in premarket trading on Friday.
Zuckerberg stated that the new company name reflects the company’s work in the metaverse, and not its namesake social network service, Facebook.
Following criticisms from regulators to lawmakers about the company’s market strength, algorithmic decisions, and the policing abuses on its service, the rebranding follows.
Employees took down the curtain that was draped over the iconic ‘Like” sign outside the Silicon Valley headquarters to reveal the new branding.
It includes a new logo depicting a blue infinity symbol and refers to the ‘metaverse’, the company’s new focus to expand beyond its social media apps
Analysts believe the metaverse platform will create a better experience for consumers who use augmented and virtual reality technology, from developing video games to wearing smart-eye glasses.
Doug Anmuth, a J.P. Morgan analyst, said that while game developers are early adopters of the platform, there is potential to make virtual fitness, education, and workplaces part of the bandwagon.
Anmuth stated that the company’s current strategy with FB Family is similar to Anmuth’s. He added that the company intends to charge minimal fees over time in order to maximize the creator economy.
Premarket trading saw Meta Platforms rise 1% to $319.95, after having gained as much as 4.3% Thursday.
In pre-market trading Friday, shares of Meta Materials, an unrelated business, rose 4.6%, to $4.77. As of the current share price, the Canadian company is worth approximately $1.33 billion.
Twitter users were quick to joke that the company’s name suggests that they are looking to steal ‘literally’ all of their users’ metadata. One user made light of a grim future in which society is even more dependent on devices and social media due to an all-consuming “metaverse”.
Twitter users quickly remarked that the rename is being used in memes.
“This all happened because Zuckerberg didn’t meta girl until college,” one user humorously tweeted, while another suggested Meta was actually an acronym
One meme made light a grim future in which society is more dependent on social media and devices due to the all-consuming “metaverse”.
Twitter’s safety page posted that the only Meta it would acknowledge is its META Team, which stands for Machine Learning, Transparency, Accountability and Ethics.
Meanwhile Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, dismissed the bombshell testimony of former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen as ‘mischaracterized’ and ‘misrepresented,’ adding the ‘suggestion that the research showed that Instagram is somehow a toxic experience is simply not true.’
Haugen’s main claim is that Facebook Zuckerberg knew that its platforms (which include Instagram and WhatsApp) could cause harm to children or teenagers, rather than intervene to protect its bottom line.
Bickert has been with the company for nine year and rebuffed such claims by referring to her personal experience as both a mother of a child safety lawyer and a former criminal prosecutor who worked in this area for ten-years.
“She said, “I can tell you that I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t prioritize safety,” in an interview with the Associated Press published on Thursday.
Facebook executives insist that Frances Haugen’s claims, that the company ‘puts profit over people’ is false.
Monika Bickert, global policy manager at the company, said that they were generally mischaracterized and misrepresented in an interview with Associated Press. However, she couldn’t name any specific thing that was not true in Haugen’s testimony.
Haugen resigned from the company with tens or thousands of confidential documents, which she secretly copied for publication to about two dozen news outlets. Some of the most shocking claims made by what are called the Facebook Papers include:
- Facebook employees have long reported that they are worried about the company’s failures to police hate speech.
- Facebook’s algorithm flooded users with extremist content based on their political beliefs.
- Facebook executives were aware that 32% girls felt Instagram made them feel worse. But, they continue to add beauty-editing filter to the app
- Instagram floods people with images and videos featuring anorexic females and other sufferers with eating disorders.
- Facebook executives knew that it was losing popularity among young people, but they shielded the numbers to investors
- Despite monitoring various right-wing accounts, staff failed in their attempt to predict the Capitol riot of January 6, 2009.
- Apple threatened to remove this app from the App Store due to its failure to police the trafficking in maids in the Philippines
- Mark Zuckerberg personally consented to requests from Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party for censorship of anti-government dissidents
- Facebook ignored or delayed suggestions by its own experts regarding how to stop anti-vaccine misinformation being spread on its platform
- Mark Zuckerberg’s public remarks about the company are often in contradiction with internal messaging
Bickert has previously excused internal research revealing that Facebook’s platforms harm caused to children by arguing that the majority of children have a positive experience on the social media giant’s platforms.
She dodged questions from The Associated Press about the tech giant’s plans to help those who feel hurt by Instagram and Facebook.
Bickert replied, “E.”ven if a few teens are having a bad experience or a small number of teens are having a bad experience, that´s too many, and we need to build features and products to support them. And that´s exactly what we´ve done over the years.’
However, she didn’t go into detail about the company’s improvements or how it measures their efficacy.
Bickert repeatedly refers to the leaked documents’stolen’, but she stated that she cannot answer the question if the company is going to sue Haugen.
When asked, she instead dismissed Haugen’s concerns by saying, ‘this was an employee who didn´t work on these issues, and I do work on these issues and want to represent the hard work that the more than 40,000 employees working on safety and security at Facebook do every day.’
Haugen claims that Mark Zuckerberg and the company knew that their platforms could cause harm to children and teens, rather than intervening and letting it affect their bottom line.
Frances Haugen, former employee of Facebook, is on Capitol Hill to testify in a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on Oct. 5.
Bickert stated, “Look, I want it to be crystal clear that this isn’t peer reviewed research. Facebook does have a serious research programme. In the last year, we participated in over 400 research articles.
Haugen’s testimony before Congress on October 5 was followed by another executive claiming that Haugen had worked for the company for less two years.
Facebook’s director of policy communications, Lena Pietsch, said publicly at the time that Haugen ‘had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives – and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.’
Pietsch and other Facebook executives have shifted the blame on Congress for not doing enough to regulate the Internet.
She said, ‘It’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 year since the rules for internet were last updated. Now, Congress must act instead of allowing the industry to make decisions that affect society.
Haugen also testified before Congress. She also expressed concern to British Parliament Monday when a new set of claims was published by media outlets.
One of her findings was an internal Facebook study that showed that 13.5% of British teenagers felt suicidal thoughts were more common because of Instagram.
In America, 6% said they traced suicidal thoughts to Instagram. Research revealed that 6% of users who experience suicidal thoughts in America trace their thoughts to Instagram. Since at least 2019, Facebook was warned that Instagram damages young girls’ body images.
One message shared on an internal messageboard in March 2020 claimed that 32% said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves if they had already been experiencing insecurities.
Haugen also stated to British lawmakers that she is extremely concerned’ at how Facebook ranks content based upon ‘engagement’. She said it fuels hate speech, extremism, and discrimination, especially in non-English-speaking nations.
She cited a Facebook study in 2019, where researchers created fake profiles to see how the platform recommends content. Two profiles were created for Americans at the opposite ends of the political spectrum.
The Facebook researcher began seeing posts supporting QAnon, and other far-right organizations, within days of activating Carol Smith’s conservative account. Karen Jones, a liberal account, started seeing posts about collusion between Russia and the US.
Meanwhile, a third dummy account for a Facebook user in India, the social network’s biggest market, saw a slew of posts against Muslims and Pakistan amid the border crisis between the two countries.
Facebook’s issues with India show that it can cause even more damage in countries that lack the resources and expertise to assess what constitutes hate or misinformation.
The internal messages of the staff at the social media giant in America show that they were responsible for the January 6 Capitol Riot after giving extremist content a platform.
“One of the darkest days of the history of democracy and self governance.” History will not judge us kindly,’ said one worker while another said: ‘We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.’
Leaked documents from Haugen reveal that Facebook may have misled the US Securities and Exchange Commission, failing to disclose its declining popularity among young users.
The above chart highlights a variety of trends that show Facebook’s declining popularity among young users. One trend is that U.S. teens spent 16% less time on Facebook between 2020 and 2021, while young adults aged 18 to 29 were spending 5% less time on Facebook.
The SEC could find the tech giant in violation as it is alleged that advertisers were duped by Facebook’s lack of disclosure regarding its influence on teens. The chart above shows the decline of teen engagement since 2012/2013.
The graph above, which was created in 2017, shows how Facebook researchers knew for at minimum four years that the social networking site was losing its popularity among young people
It is believed to have failed to explain how many of its users are people who have more than one account on its websites. This could mean that the actual number of users could be as low as 11%, compared to what its figures would suggest.
One trend shows that U.S. teenagers spent 16% less time on Facebook between 2020 and 2021. According to Bloomberg, young adults aged 18 to 29 spent 5% less time on Facebook, as well.
Meanwhile, another recent claim against the company is that Instagram bombards women and girls who suffer from eating disorders with images and videos of exceedingly thin females and others afflicted with anorexia.
The New York Post obtained internal documents that revealed that Instagram’s algorithm curates options according to users’ searches and preferences. This includes those who are interested in diet, weight loss, or thinness.
This year, Instagram researchers conducted an experiment where they typed #skinny into their search terms and were then offered the chance to browse other accounts featuring dangerously thin women and girls.
Some account names include _skinandbones_, _applecoreanorexic’ and _skinny._.binge.
Experts in eating disorders advise that young girls and women with anorexia or bulimia should not be exposed to images of people with similar problems, as it could reinforce body-related insecurity.
‘Even people suffering from anorexia may be able to identify that someone is too thin. But, there can still be something appealing about that image for them,” said Dr. Andrea D. Vazzana of New York University’s Langone Health System, who has worked with patients with eating disorder.
Vazzana stated that 99 percent of her patients had reported that prolonged exposure to social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok had affected their health.
Instagram has added disclaimers to warn users about potentially harmful content in an apparent effort to curb the proliferation of images that could worsen eating disorders.
Another example of Facebook critics putting profits above people is found in internal documents. They claim that Facebook was slow to act when antivaccine misinformation spreads on its platform. This includes ignoring or delaying suggestions made by its own experts on the matter.
Some Facebook employees thought they had found a solution to the viral spread after news broke about the dangers and ineffectiveness coronavirus vaccinations.
Researchers at the company discovered that they could subtly alter the ranking of vaccine posts in people’s newsfeeds to reduce misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines. They also offered users legitimate sources such as the World Health Organization.
‘Given these results, I´m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,’ one Facebook employee wrote in March, responding to the internal memo about the study.
Facebook decided to rescind some of the study’s suggestions. Other changes weren´t made until April.
A Facebook researcher suggested that March vaccine posts should be disabled so that the platform could tackle anti-vaccine messages. However, this suggestion was rejected.
Haugen stated that Facebook’s products harm children and stoke division.
“The company’s leadership is aware of how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary adjustments because they have put their astronomical profits ahead of people.
She stated that Congress must act. “They won’t solve the crisis without your help.
Zuckerberg addressed employees of Facebook and disputed Haugen’s portrayal of the company putting profit above the well-being its users or pushing divisive content.
Zuckerberg wrote, “At the most fundamental level, I think most people just don’t recognize that false picture of the company being painted,”
He did however agree with Haugen regarding the need to update internet regulations. This would allow private companies to take decisions on social issues without having to do so on their own.
Zuckerberg wrote, “We are committed to doing the best possible work, but at some point the right body to evaluate tradeoffs among social equities, is our democratically elected Congress,”