Frances Haugen Takes on Facebook | TIME — Transcript

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1. 0:00i think one of the most dangerous things
2. 0:02about things like engagement based
3. 0:03ranking so that's the idea of
4. 0:05prioritizing content based on its
5. 0:06likelihood of provoking a reaction
6. 0:09is
7. 0:11it is much easier to inspire someone to
8. 0:13hate than it is to compassion or empathy
9. 0:16my name is francis haugen
10. 0:18i used to work at facebook and joined
11. 0:20the company because i believe facebook
12. 0:23has the potential to bring out the best
13. 0:25in us
14. 0:26but i am here today because i believe
15. 0:28that facebook's products harm children
16. 0:31stoke division
17. 0:33weaken our democracy and much more
18. 0:36[Music]
19. 0:39when i was in high school i joined the
20. 0:41debate team because i i had this vision
21. 0:43when i was 14 that i wanted to go to mit
22. 0:45and i was told that you needed to be
23. 0:47well-rounded so i joined debate
24. 0:49and i ended up really liking debate um
25. 0:52and i did it for four years i ended up
26. 0:54in the top 25 in the country by my
27. 0:56senior year but i also coached debate in
28. 0:58college for four years
29. 0:59in massachusetts that was incredibly
30. 1:01impactful because in debate you have a
31. 1:03very limited amount of time to
32. 1:04communicate and you need ideas to stick
33. 1:07specifically on the debate
34. 1:10okay how did how do you think it's
35. 1:11informed your personal practice oh yeah
36. 1:13oh yeah actually that that's a great
37. 1:15question so
38. 1:16um
39. 1:17a lot of people are are shocked at kind
40. 1:20of the breadth of what i was able to get
41. 1:22out of the company and like there's
42. 1:24little things that i think people don't
43. 1:25necessarily appreciate which is like how
44. 1:27do you even organize that information as
45. 1:29you do it
46. 1:30right and and i remember as i was going
47. 1:33through the process and like organizing
48. 1:34my folders i was like wow this is just
49. 1:36like debate camp like you have all your
50. 1:37folders with like your ideas and like
51. 1:39you have to have an idea of how will i
52. 1:41organize this and so it's one of those
53. 1:43things where i have i think when i was
54. 1:4416 and doing that i had no idea that it
55. 1:47would be useful in this way in the
56. 1:48future during lockdown i went live with
57. 1:50my parents
58. 1:51i was learning all these horrific things
59. 1:53about facebook
60. 1:55and it was really tearing me up inside
61. 1:57and i think a thing that really hurts
62. 1:59most whistleblowers
63. 2:00is
64. 2:01whistleblowers live with secrets that
65. 2:03impact the lives of other people and
66. 2:05they feel like they have no way of
67. 2:07resolving them right and so instead of
68. 2:10being destroyed by learning these things
69. 2:13i got to talk to my mother and my mother
70. 2:15is a priest
71. 2:16and so if you're having a crisis of
72. 2:17conscience where you're trying to
73. 2:20learn like figure out a path that you
74. 2:22can live with
75. 2:23having someone you can agonize to over
76. 2:25and over and over again is like the
77. 2:27ultimate amenity
78. 2:28you know my moment where i decided i had
79. 2:31to do something was when they dissolved
80. 2:32civic integrity
81. 2:34and i didn't know how i would do it yet
82. 2:36like i had to think for a long time on
83. 2:37how to do it in the right way
84. 2:39but it meant that when that moment
85. 2:41happened
86. 2:42i was actually in a pretty good place
87. 2:44right like i i wasn't i wasn't in place
88. 2:46of crisis like many whistleblowers are
89. 2:48and so i think that gave me a better
90. 2:50platform in order to think
91. 2:53rationally and not emotionally
92. 3:02i raised a lot of concerns in the first
93. 3:04three months and i was always like
94. 3:07uh my concerns were always discounted by
95. 3:10my manager
96. 3:11by
97. 3:12um other people who had been at the
98. 3:14company for longer like for example the
99. 3:17the researchers i feel so bad for the
100. 3:19researchers who worked on civic
101. 3:20integrity because many of them have been
102. 3:21doing it for a number of years they're
103. 3:23people who cared passionately about
104. 3:25these topics like ethnic violence
105. 3:27and i can't imagine
106. 3:30learning like helping to develop and
107. 3:31learning about solutions and having them
108. 3:33shot down over and over again yeah it
109. 3:35was very frustrating i didn't feel like
110. 3:36there was a will to act
111. 3:40[Music]
112. 3:55so we got to do international misinfo
113. 3:58for three months the three months that
114. 4:00my team which is all brand new to the
115. 4:01company like we're all new we like we
116. 4:03didn't have anyone to help us learn any
117. 4:05of these systems which i flagged for my
118. 4:06manager was a disastrous idea um so we
119. 4:10got to spend three months on
120. 4:11international miss info
121. 4:13and then we got shifted back into the us
122. 4:15because they did a lockdown for the 2020
123. 4:17u.s 2020 election
124. 4:19and then we were just doing narrow
125. 4:20casting from that point on
126. 4:23so we're in this really interesting
127. 4:25moment where you know both the uk and
128. 4:27europe have faced larger safety problems
129. 4:30than the united states has because
130. 4:31facebook has overwhelmingly spent on
131. 4:33safety in the united states because
132. 4:35they're afraid of being regulated
133. 4:36um i think both europe and the uk are a
134. 4:40little bit further along and thinking
135. 4:41about what they want in laws because
136. 4:43they've faced worse harms
137. 4:45and so right now we're on the verge of
138. 4:47passing either the online safety act or
139. 4:49the digital services act be it in the uk
140. 4:51or the eu and so my goal was to support
141. 4:55lawmakers as they think through these
142. 4:56issues and answer any questions they
143. 4:58have
144. 4:59[Music]
145. 5:00i hope the thing they take from my
146. 5:02disclosures is the idea that you know
147. 5:04any system that is this influential in
148. 5:06our lives
149. 5:07needs to have mandated transparency
150. 5:10because
151. 5:12the sheer magnitude of issues where
152. 5:14we've demonstrated that they're lying
153. 5:16shows that any company that has this
154. 5:18much control over how we think how we
155. 5:20consume our information has to have
156. 5:22accountability
157. 5:28[Music]