In the Assembly, the Facebook whistleblower advocates social networks “on a human scale”

“We can put social networks back on a human scale.” Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told members of the Laws Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee on Wednesday that it is possible to “go back to 2008 or 2009, where our news feed consisted of content generated by our friends” and or “we weren’t talking about destroying democracy”.

“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.”, she explained.

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 endless renewal of content, to keep the user on their news feed.

However, these groups are comparable to real “variant factories”, where the “more 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 tells us it knows about the issues” hyper-amplification of problematic content, “but we never have access to the data that would allow us to estimate the progress that is being made” to remedy it, she lamented. Facebook should be forced to provide them “every week”, To “10,000 pairs of eyes”, to researchers or specialists in algorithms who could evaluate things, she pleads.

The Facebook whistleblower also welcomed the willingness of French deputies to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers, in a bill that will soon be examined in the hemicycle.

“Any kind of support you give to whistleblowers will be beneficial”, did she say.