Zuckerberg defends Facebook in response to the accusations of the former employee

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to accusations made by the company's former data expert about the network's handling of children and teens and "nourishing" violence.

"(The accusations) do not reflect the company we know... Many of the allegations are meaningless... We care deeply about safety, wellbeing and mental health issues. It's hard to see press coverage distorting our work and our motivations," Zuckerberg said in a post on his website.

In a hearing before the Senate, on Tuesday, the former Facebook content officer, Frances Hogan, considered that there is a devastating effect on the tech giant, noting that there is now an opportunity to act against it.

Hogan revealed internal documents published by the "Wall Street Journal" on protecting children from the dangers of the Internet and social media, and said that Facebook was aware of the danger of its mechanism of action on children, noting that 600,000 children's accounts on the famous platform "should not (exist)."

Hogan said the company would have preferred to focus on profit over some basic issues such as human trafficking.

The former Facebook content chief called on the US government to take action against the company in order to force it to retract its behaviour.

For his part, the CEO of Facebook denied that the company ignored research, saying that it had established a "pioneering research program to understand these important issues" and hired more employees for this purpose "than any other company."

He said, "If we want to hide our results, why have we set an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we do? And if social media is responsible for polarizing society as some claim, why do we see polarization increasing in the United States while remaining stable or declining in many countries? Countries with heavy use of social media around the world?

He also denied giving priority to profit at the expense of the safety and well-being of users, evidenced by the amendment made to the way topics are presented to users on Facebook, although it may lead to users spending less time on the site, according to his expression.

Zuckerberg also refused to promote "angry" content for profit, saying the company makes money from ads and advertisers, who refuse to display their ads in this type of content.

Focusing on questions about children, he said, "It's very important to me that everything we build is safe and good for children. Tech companies need to build experiences that meet their needs while also keeping them safe, and we're committed to that."

The Facebook founder dismissed allegations about the negative impact of Instagram on the mental health of young people, citing an earlier company statement that cited research that found the popular photo app helped many teens facing psychological problems such as loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating disorders.

Regarding the malfunction that suspended the company's services, on Monday, he said: "We seek to extract information that helps strengthen our systems."

He said it was a reminder of "how important our work is to people... and what it means to people who depend on our services to connect with loved ones, run their businesses or support their communities."

And Facebook's infrastructure director, Santosh Janardhan, announced in a detailed statement, Tuesday, the reason that led to the outage of Facebook services from the world, on Monday.

Hogan's testimony came at a difficult time for the tech giant, hours after an unprecedented outage, Monday, hitting the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp applications, lasting about 6 hours and affecting billions of users.

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