Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:01facebook is one of the largest companies
3. 0:03in the world it has incredibly deep
4. 0:05pockets
5. 0:06i understand that they facebook has the
6. 0:08resources and potentially the motivation
7. 0:10to ruin my life but i also accept it
8. 0:13because i know that i am aligned with my
9. 0:15values and what i believe in
10. 0:20my name is francis haugen
11. 0:22i have worked at more social media
12. 0:24companies than probably
13. 0:27all but a handful of people in the
14. 0:28entire tech industry
15. 0:31i founded the the product team for the
16. 0:34for search on google plus
17. 0:36i built out the consumer data mining
18. 0:38team at yelp if you've ever looked from
19. 0:40a yelp menu photo that was our first
20. 0:41feature
21. 0:43i led ranking for the home feed on
22. 0:44pinterest
23. 0:45and i have seen into the depths of the
24. 0:48integrity organization at facebook
25. 0:50i grew up in iowa city iowa very vibrant
26. 0:54it's also a real tradition in iowa of
27. 0:56community a lot of things are done with
28. 0:58cooperatives i think that has influenced
29. 1:00like my commitment to working towards
30. 1:02things like accessibility um or like
31. 1:05working on civic integrity at this book
32. 1:07this was my virtual badge the day i
33. 1:09joined
34. 1:10facebook i was recruited to be the first
35. 1:13civic misinformation pm i was extremely
36. 1:16excited to be able to make a difference
37. 1:18[Music]
38. 1:19and i was extremely scared
39. 1:23you have to be very very careful when
40. 1:24you when you design machine learning
41. 1:26systems that you are asking them to do
42. 1:28what you actually want them to do
43. 1:30because the computer will find the
44. 1:32shortest path there and it may have
45. 1:34consequences that are unintentional
46. 1:37very few people
47. 1:39are on the lookout for the problems that
48. 1:41these algorithms can cause on society
49. 1:44there are very few people who understand
50. 1:45what levers exist
51. 1:47to regulate or address these problems
52. 1:51and that is the real consequence of a
53. 1:52lot of things that are happening at
54. 1:53facebook facebook did not set out to do
55. 1:56to build a system that was socially
56. 1:58harmful but there are a variety of
57. 2:00things about how their algorithms are
58. 2:01structured that are causing these
59. 2:03problems there's a cluster of problems
60. 2:05that have certain themes that run
61. 2:07between them
62. 2:08when you combine fragile places in the
63. 2:11world and these design choices that
64. 2:13facebook has made
65. 2:14it acts like gasoline on a fire
66. 2:17that little choice
67. 2:19had huge consequences like when they
68. 2:21went and analyzed the data they found
69. 2:23that just that one feature if you turned
70. 2:25it off you could radically reduce the
71. 2:27amount of misinformation they got spread
72. 2:29the amount of coveted rumors that got
73. 2:31spread the amount of violent inciting
74. 2:33contents that got spread
75. 2:35internal facebook documents have been
76. 2:37turned over by a whistleblower for the
77. 2:39wall street journal
78. 2:40this series details how facebook
79. 2:43executives are aware of the ways the
80. 2:45platform causes harm but executives
81. 2:48often lack the will or the ability to
82. 2:50address them
83. 2:54to see the see what's actually happening
84. 2:56see the people's lives are on the line
85. 2:58you feel profoundly alone to
86. 3:01learn these things
87. 3:03living with that powerlessness is
88. 3:05excruciating and it was really really
89. 3:07hard for a period of time like i felt a
90. 3:09lot of despair
91. 3:12at least some of the internal documents
92. 3:14have been turned over by the
93. 3:15whistleblower to the securities and
94. 3:17exchange commission and to congress
95. 3:20facebook is not allowed to lie to the
96. 3:21public and so many of the points that
97. 3:24are included in my disclosure to the sec
98. 3:27are around facebook actively misleading
99. 3:29the public
100. 3:30or
101. 3:31intentionally withholding information
102. 3:33that is relevant to investors
103. 3:36[Music]
104. 3:37and the problem is that facebook has not
105. 3:38been willing to admit that they have
106. 3:40problems
107. 3:41and because they can't start from that
108. 3:43place of admitting they have a problem
109. 3:45they can't even explore solutions
110. 3:49imagine if the department of
111. 3:50transportation was trying to decide how
112. 3:52to make cars safer and they didn't know
113. 3:54that seat belts could exist
114. 3:56we will repeat these problems over and
115. 3:58over again until we figure out how
116. 4:00to collaboratively regulate social media
117. 4:06and so when we think about what is the
118. 4:08path forward the path forward is about
119. 4:10transparency and governance it is about
120. 4:12us as a society collaborating to figure
121. 4:14out how to solve problems together and
122. 4:16not alone
123. 4:17um it's not about breaking up facebook
124. 4:20the thing that's really interesting is
125. 4:22that people often like think of this as
126. 4:23like an either or like do i do we have
127. 4:25social media not have social media these
128. 4:27aren't either wars we can have platforms
129. 4:29that we love and enjoy that are also
130. 4:31safe my hope when this is over is that
131. 4:34congress or regulators or the eu
132. 4:37that someone comes forward and actually
133. 4:39begins enforcing standards on facebook
134. 4:42that allow us as a community to do
135. 4:44governance
136. 4:46and that i'm hoping that will remedy a
137. 4:48lot of the harms that have been flagged
138. 4:49through the disclosures
139. 4:56[Music]
140. 5:00you