{"id":10859,"date":"2023-11-08T02:08:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T02:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/execs-ignored-the-damage-instagram-does-to-teens-meta-whistleblower-tells-congress\/"},"modified":"2023-11-08T02:08:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T02:08:41","slug":"execs-ignored-the-damage-instagram-does-to-teens-meta-whistleblower-tells-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=10859","title":{"rendered":"Execs ignored the damage Instagram does to teens, Meta whistleblower tells Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Meta\u2019s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored <\/strong>warnings for years <\/strong>about harms to teens on <\/strong>its platforms such as Instagram, a company whistleblower told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n Meta instead fosters a culture of \u201csee no evil, hear no evil\u201d that overlooks evidence of harm internally while publicly presenting carefully crafted metrics to downplay the issue, said Arturo Bejar, an ex-Facebook engineering director and consultant.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar is the latest former insider to level public allegations that the tech giant knowingly turns a blind eye to problems that its policies and technology cannot cheaply or easily address.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar\u2019s testimony before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee comes after what he described as fruitless appeals to Zuckerberg and his lieutenants in the fall of 2021 based on research his team had conducted on the experiences of teens and other users of Meta\u2019s platforms.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tuesday\u2019s hearing follows a public report by The Wall Street Journal last week that laid out many of Bejar\u2019s claims, including that he first became motivated to study the issue because of unwanted sexual advances his own 14-year-old daughter received from strangers on Instagram.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt is unacceptable that a 13-year-old girl gets propositioned on social media,\u201d Bejar testified, citing a statistic from his research finding that more than 25% of 13-to-15-year-olds have reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. \u201cThis is unacceptable, and my work has shown that it doesn\u2019t need to be this way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Amid criticisms of its platforms, Meta has rolled out some 30 parental controls to manage who their kids can talk to or how much time they spend on Facebook and Instagram.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tuesday\u2019s hearing\u00a0once again places Meta in the bipartisan crosshairs of Congress, which has long struggled to come up with laws and regulations for social media in the face of industry lobbying, First Amendment concerns and, in some cases, substantive policy disagreements between Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile, both parties have united behind blaming Meta for contributing to a nationwide mental health crisis.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar\u2019s testimony arrives almost exactly two years after Frances Haugen, another former Meta employee and a member of the Council for Responsible Social Media, came forward with troves of internal documents that she said proved how Instagram was aware its service may be harming children.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar\u2019s research \u201cis basically a smoking gun,\u201d Haugen told CNN in an interview Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe fact that he has the emails and responses from senior executives like [former COO] Sheryl Sandberg, this is a really, really big deal,\u201d Haugen said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cEvery day countless people inside and outside of Meta are working on how to help keep young people safe online,\u201d said Meta spokesman Andy Stone in a statement. \u201cThe issues raised here regarding user perception surveys highlight one part of this effort, and surveys like these have led us to create features like\u00a0anonymous notifications of potentially hurtful content\u00a0and\u00a0comment warnings.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Stone added that while the specific user perception survey Bejar worked on is no longer run at the company, Meta still performs many other types of user perception surveys and that some of the tools it\u2019s introduced for teens\u00a0\u2014\u00a0such as a feature to silently mute other users \u2014\u00a0are a direct result of those surveys.\n <\/p>\n

\n Lawmakers on Tuesday ripped into the social media giant, saying they were \u201cin no way surprised\u201d by Bejar\u2019s allegations and calling for swift passage of legislation to rein in Meta and other tech giants.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey hid from this committee and all of Congress evidence of the harms that they knew was credible,\u201d said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.\n <\/p>\n

\n Missouri Republican Josh Hawley blasted Big Tech companies for spending \u201cgobs\u201d of money to gain \u201ca hammerhold\u201d on the legislative process and to thwart bills that would restrict the industry\u2019s power. He also accused Meta of \u201ccooking the books\u201d on data related to mental health harms.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn noted that Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri had testified before the Senate soon after Bejar had notified him, Zuckerberg, Sandberg and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox about his concerns.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn fact, [Mosseri] testified just a few months after you sent two emails to him about youth harms on the platform,\u201d Blackburn said. \u201cIn his testimony, Mr. Mosseri said, and I quote, \u2018we care deeply about the teens on Instagram, which is in part why we research complex issues like bullying and social comparison and make changes.\u2019\u00a0Do you agree with his characterization?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar replied: \u201cI agree with that they make research; I don\u2019t agree that they make changes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIsn\u2019t it a fact that social media has lowered the cost of being an a-hole?\u201d asked Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar agreed. \u201cYes, I think using your term, they reward being an \u2018a-hole,\u2019\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar left Facebook in 2015 but returned as a consultant working on user well-being issues in 2019 following his daughter\u2019s run-ins with unwanted sexual advances. Though his daughter reported the incidents, he said, Facebook did nothing.\n <\/p>\n

\n Hired by Facebook to study the issue, Bejar said he soon ran into institutional hurdles.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt seems to me that the company culture is one of, \u2018see no evil, hear no evil,\u2019\u201d Bejar told lawmakers. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to understand what people are experiencing. And we\u2019re not willing to invest in that and the tools that will help.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Meta has previously said that its incentives are aligned with users on safety issues and that Meta acts aggressively on harmful material because it knows users do not want to see it. But Bejar told lawmakers Tuesday he believes users\u2019 experiences would meaningfully improve if Zuckerberg were required to disclose survey data on every earnings call about self-reported bad experiences on company platforms.\n <\/p>\n

\n According to the Wall Street Journal, Bejar\u2019s survey work found that more than 1 in 4 users under age 16 reported having a \u201cbad experience\u201d with Instagram as a result of \u201cwitnessing hostility against someone based on their race, religion or identity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cMore than a fifth felt worse about themselves after viewing others\u2019 posts,\u201d the Journal wrote of Bejar\u2019s research, \u201cand 13% had experienced unwanted sexual advances in the past seven days.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Other evidence from Bejar\u2019s research presented Tuesday included that \u201cnearly a third of young teens have seen discrimination based on gender, religion, race and sexual orientation,\u201d according to Blumenthal.\n <\/p>\n

\n One of Bejar\u2019s key allegations is that Meta has poured enormous resources into automated detection of clearly rule-breaking content, while diverting resources away from costly human reviews of situations that do not neatly or explicitly violate Meta\u2019s rules but that may be distressing to users nonetheless.\n <\/p>\n

\n After Bejar contacted Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Cox and Mosseri, Sandberg wrote to him individually to sympathize, and Mosseri held a meeting with Bejar to discuss the matter, according to the Journal. But Bejar, who left the company weeks later in October 2021, maintains that his complaints went unaddressed and that he never heard from Zuckerberg at all.\n <\/p>\n

\n Bejar\u2019s evidence, which is part of a multistate federal lawsuit against Meta filed last month, could encourage more whistleblowers to come forward, said Haugen. And it fleshes out the incomplete picture that the public was presented when she first testified, she added.\n <\/p>\n

\n Lawmakers including Hawley and Blumenthal vowed Tuesday to try to push a high-profile bill known as the Kids\u2019 Online Safety Act across the finish line by the end of the year.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBig Tech is very much in danger,\u201d Blumenthal said, mentioning previous government actions to curb harmful products. He said everyday Americans understand \u201cthe harm being done\u201d and compared it to harms from smoking. He said Big Tech is \u201cthe next Big Tobacco.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN\u2019s Samantha Kelly contributed reporting. <\/em>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n