An Instagram algorithm may have shown Molly Russell, a troubled teenager, harmful content even before she had searched for it. This is what a whistleblower claimed.
The tech giant and its parent company Facebook has been under pressure ever since Frances Haugen revealed it knew the app worsened youngsters’ mental health.
Next year, an inquest will be held to determine the role of social media platforms in Molly’s death. Molly, who was 14 years old, took her own life in 2017.
Her father has previously accused Instagram of ‘helping to kill’ his daughter after he found she had been viewing graphic images of self-harm and suicide on the app.
Yesterday Miss Haugen suggested that while Molly may have ‘followed some stuff related to being a little blue’ the platform would have taken her down a dangerous rabbit hole.
Molly Russell, then just 14, took her own death in November 2017. Next year, an inquest will examine the role that social media played in Russell’s death.
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen revealed the social media platform knew the app worsened youngsters’ mental health
The former Facebook employee told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘I guarantee you that with the algorithm, if she kept engaging, it just kept getting worse.
‘Imagine you are kind of a fragile teen and you are being exposed to a little bit of stuff, talking about how you are worthless, and then [you]It just keeps getting worse. It is bad.’
Miss Haugen will be giving evidence in Westminster Monday to a joint committee that is reviewing the draft Online Safety Bill.
The Bill will impose a duty on social media companies to protect users against harmful content. Ofcom can also fine them up to 10% of their global turnover.
Ahead of the hearing, she also warned that plans by Facebook to encrypt some of its services – including Instagram – would make it more difficult for law enforcement to catch criminals.
Miss Haugen, who resigned as a Facebook product manager, leaked thousands internal documents that revealed how Facebook knew its platforms had an impact on children.
It also included statistics showing that Instagram content makes a third of young people feel worse about themselves.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of showing no inclination to protect the public by a former employee
Miss Haugen’s intervention comes as yet more damaging reports emerge about the tech giant over the weekend after she gave several US news outlets access to the confidential research.
One showed that 10 percent of US views of political material on Facebook was falsely claiming that the 2020 US presidential election was fraudulent.
Yet attempts to stop this had been ‘piecemeal’, according to one document, which has reignited concerns about the company’s role in the Capitol Hill riots in January.
Miss Haugen claimed that Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) had shown no desire to protect the public.
She told The Observer: ‘Right now, Mark is unaccountable. He holds all the power. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety.’
Miss Haugen further warned against Facebook’s controversial plans to encrypt its Messenger app and Instagram’s direct messages.
The Home Secretary intervened earlier in the year to criticize the move. This would mean that only the sender or recipient can see the message.
Priti Patel warned that it would severely hamper the police in their efforts to ‘tackle abhorrent criminal acts and protect victims’.
Defending the plans, Facebook said it was to keep users safe from hackers and that it would ‘continue to receive user reports of suspicious messages’.
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