Facebook Growth Projects Often Unraveled Safety Work, Haugen Says
October 05 2021 - 12:53PM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook's teams that drive the company's growth often work at
cross purposes with the teams responsible for keeping the platform
safe, said Frances Haugen, the former Facebook Inc. employee who
gathered internal documents showing how Instagram led to depression
and anxiety in many teenage girls.
At a Senate hearing Tuesday morning, Ms. Haugen said many
initiatives spearheaded by Facebook's "integrity" teams were often
"undone by new growth projects that counteract those remedies."
She also said Facebook teams are often too understaffed to
adequately deal with the problems at hand, adding that she was on
one team that could only handle a third of the cases in its
queue.
Facebook has said it has made significant improvements to
address harmful content. "To suggest we encourage bad content and
do nothing is just not true," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone has
said.
But when given the choice, Ms. Haugen said, Facebook leaders
often chose a path that preserved profits over the safety of its
users. She added this was part of a corporate culture that CEO Mark
Zuckerberg built at Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg has majority voting
control and serves as CEO and chairman of Facebook's board, which
makes him unusually powerful within Silicon Valley, she said.
"There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but
himself," she said.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 05, 2021 12:38 ET (16:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024