Brussels You seldom hear so much mutual respect in a committee meeting. Former Facebook manager Frances Haugen answered questions from MEPs for two and a half hours on Monday evening. No parliamentarian forgot to express his sincere thanks to Haugen. This in turn called the work of the MEPs a “light in the dark”.
Haugen has published documents which, if you read them, show that Facebook puts profit above the safety of its users. The network’s algorithms resulted in violence and death.
This statement is based on the observation that Facebook exposes its users to disinformation and leads them from moderate to extreme content. Behind this is a business model that is based on the fact that users spend a lot of time on Facebook. And this commitment is particularly triggered by emotional and polarizing content.
The mechanisms are known in principle. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is currently being drafted in Brussels, the first law in the world whose task it is to break this logic. Whether this works depends on many subtleties in the legal text.
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Haugen even warned that if the law was poorly drafted, Europe could be worse off than before. So the social networks should be made responsible for moderating harmful content. However, there should be exceptions for the content of classic news media. Haugen sees a danger in this: “Every modern disinformation campaign uses the channels of news media on digital platforms and tricks the system,” she said in her opening statement. Such exceptions could jeopardize the effectiveness of the law. “In the end, we could even be worse off than we are in the current situation.”
More data exchange between networks means less control
On another point, Haugen explicitly spoke out against the plans of some MPs. There is a demand to make social networks interoperable. That would mean, for example, that you can join a Facebook group with the account of another network. This would strengthen competition and give smaller networks the chance to become Facebook competitors.
But implementing this idea would create problems and require more regulation, says Haugen. Because it would mean that the data from one network would also be sent to other networks – but there the user would have less control over them. As an example, she cited the case that a user wanted to delete old photos.
He would then have to trust that all networks to which the image was sent implement the deletion request. She compared the situation to emails that are beyond control once they are sent.
In general, however, Haugen is enthusiastic about the work that is being done in the EU. Politicians would have a chance that every generation only had once to enact rules for the online world. It is about protecting children, limiting hate speech and preserving democracy.
So far, the Facebook parent company Meta has been given responsibility for the risks in its network. Meta is at the same time judge, prosecutor and witness. The company, Haugen said several times, has deliberately misled the world again and again.
Multilingualism as a strength
She sees a strength of the EU legislators in the multilingualism. Many of Facebook’s security measures are only implemented for the English-speaking world. With the DSA, however, the EU can force social networks to consider user groups with other languages just as thoroughly. This could also have an impact on markets outside of Europe, where Facebook plays an even bigger role in informing citizens.
She sees a central point in the forced disclosure of data. This is the only way to check Facebook’s statements about yourself. Disinformation campaigns are often discovered on Twitter because the data is freely accessible there. Campaigns on Facebook are therefore often only noticed because the same account names are used there as on Twitter.
When the tobacco industry declared filter cigarettes to be healthy, this was independently verified and debunked. The statements made by Facebook about its algorithms and their effects, on the other hand, have not yet been able to be checked accordingly.
More: Europe needs a containment strategy against Facebook – but loses sight of the bigger picture