Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen was received like a savior, as if she had testified in front of the European Parliament on Monday evening.

Even before the hearing, individual MPs published selfies with the whistleblower.

Then every halfway important word was spread on Twitter.

Haugen was praised for the courage to have messed with the American company, which is now called Meta, received applause.

What a difference to the hearing with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg three years ago.

He had to hear from the then leader of the Liberals, Guy Verhofstadt, that he was "a genius who has created a digital monster that is destroying our democracies".  

Hendrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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With her revelations of the business practices of Facebook, Haugen confirmed that the group puts profit above the well-being of its users, not only in the opinion of the EU parliamentarians - which, unsurprisingly, denies that. At the hearing, Meta made it clear that current developments such as the elections in Germany did not provide any evidence that Facebook and other social media contributed to the polarization. “The decisions made by the leadership of Facebook are a big problem, for children, for public safety and for democracy,” Haugen repeated. The company does too little against the spread of fake news and hate speech, the algorithms prefer to present the users with the content that provokes anger. It also helpsthat children and young people are given a problematic body image.  

Against false information and for more transparency

Haugen has said all of this several times since she identified herself as the source of the Wall Street Journal published "Facebook Files" in October. Even more: none of this came as a surprise when the "Files" were released. Nevertheless, the Haugen hearing has political weight. After all, the European Parliament and the member states are currently negotiating two laws to restrict the power of Facebook and the other internet giants and to control their business practices: the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA aims to curb the spread of false information. To this end, the corporations should, among other things, create more transparency about how the algorithms work that recommend certain content to users.  

The Greens and Social Democrats want to go further and ban personalized advertising. After all, the business model of Facebook and other platform operators is based on making money through such ads - and that works particularly well by luring users through exciting content such as hate speech or fake news. Liberals and Christian Democrats are going too far. Not only because of this threatens to delay the negotiations on the law.  

Haugen did not comment on this. However, she warned against allowing the platforms to refuse to disclose their algorithms, for example with reference to the protection of trade secrets: "Then the companies will simply classify everything as a trade secret." She also denied exceptions for news companies such as newspaper publishers. Any modern disinformation campaign would gratefully take advantage of such a loophole. Otherwise Haugen was full of praise for the DSA. The EU could thus set a "gold standard" for dealing with Internet platforms. It is a “light in the dark” and can inspire many countries - “including my own country”. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton used this tailwind to call on Parliament and the EU states to reach an agreement quickly.The discussions on the DMA and DSA should be concluded in mid-2022.