Washington:
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell on Tuesday referred to as on Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to preserve all documents associated to a testimony last week from corporation whistleblower Frances Haugen.
“The testimony … raises significant concerns about whether Facebook has misled the public, federal regulators, and this committee,” stated Cantwell, a Democrat.
“This committee will continue its oversight and work to pursue legislation to protect consumers’ privacy, improve data security, and strengthen federal enforcement to address the digital harms that are the subject of these hearings.”
She asked Facebook to preserve and retain internal Facebook analysis referenced by Haugen and Facebook’s evaluation of the analysis ranking or composition systems experiments or suggestions to alter these ranking systems and the influence of Facebook’s platforms on children and teenagers below the age of 18.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone stated in response the corporation has “absolutely no commercial incentive, no moral incentive, no company-wide incentive to do anything other than to try to give the maximum number of people as much of a positive experience as possible on Facebook.”
Cantwell’s letter cited “the potential danger that social media platforms pose for spreading divisive content was demonstrated, with horrifying consequences, by the role the Facebook platform played in fomenting ethnic violence against the Rohingya.”
She added “the role of Facebook’s platform in the Rohingya tragedy illustrates the horrible consequences that failing to effectively limit the spread of divisive content on social media platforms can have in inflicting public harm.”
Last month, a U.S. judge ordered Facebook to release records of accounts connected to anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant had shut down, rejecting its argument about safeguarding privacy as “rich with irony.”
Last week, the Commerce Committee harshly criticized Facebook, accusing Zuckerberg of pushing for greater income though becoming cavalier about user security, and demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media corporation harms children’s mental overall health and stokes divisions.
Zuckerberg defended the corporation, saying the accusations had been at odds with Facebook’s ambitions.
Haugen referred to as for transparency about how Facebook entices customers to maintain scrolling, developing ample chance for advertisers to attain them.
Haugen, a former solution manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation group, left the almost $1 trillion corporation with tens of thousands of confidential documents.
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