"We can put social networks back on a human scale, go back to 2008 or 2009, where our news feed was made up of content generated by our friends" and where "we weren't talking about destroying democracy" , declared Mrs Haugen before the members of the Committee on Laws and the Committee on Economic Affairs.
“Facebook has been experimenting with this in recent years: if your family and friends are a bigger part of what you see, you have less hate speech, less polarization, less nudity, less violence,” did she say.
Frances Haugen has particularly targeted large groups on Facebook, which can have millions of members.
According to her, Facebook deliberately pushes users to join these large groups, because they allow an infinite renewal of content, to rivet the user to his news feed ...
However, these groups are comparable to real "variant factories", where the "most extreme" content is selected to be pushed to millions of people, she regretted.
Frances Haugen, who has already spoken in Europe, including at the Lisbon Web Summit and in the European Parliament, once again pleaded for Facebook to be forced to make public the data it holds on the use of its service .
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen at the European Parliament on November 8, 2021 in Brussels JOHN THYS AFP
"Facebook tells us that it is aware of" problematic content hyper-amplification issues, "but we never have access to the data that would allow us to estimate the progress that is being made" to address them, a- she lamented.
Facebook should be forced to provide them "every week," to "10,000 pairs of eyes," to researchers or algorithmic scientists who could assess things, she said.
© 2021 AFP