Francis Haugen, the whistleblower from Facebook, had some interesting things to say! I applaud this well educated young woman for her courage in speaking out against a media giant.
We live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful and polarizing content that erodes civic trust and erodes our trust in each other. Hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation is actively perpetuated by platforms like Facebook and its family of Apps. Research shows that people are more easily inspired to anger than any other emotion. Angry and polarizing content means people spend more time on the platform stoking their anger. This means that they also click on more ads, which in turn makes more money for Facebook.
Ms. Haugen tells us that Facebook knows what is going on and has in fact changed its algorithms to capitalize on this. She estimates that it “actions” as little as 3-5% of hate content and approximately .6% of violence and incitement.
In 2018, the military in Myanmar used Facebook to launch a genocide. In 2019, a complaint was made from many major political parties in Europe that they felt that the change in Facebook algorithms meant that they had to skew their message toward negativity or the information they wanted to share was not distributed. Also, studies continuously report that depression and suicidal thoughts increase in young people after spending time on platforms like Instagram where they are being flooded by self negating content. Hate crimes and intolerance of others has escalated around the world. This is no accident.
A handful of tech designers and CEO’s negatively influence the way billions of people think, act and live their lives. Spreading anger and division is a trillion dollar business. But do we really want more hate? More divisiveness? Where are the thought leaders who can inspire and empower us?
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