Frances Haugen: The Facebook Whistleblower | 60 Minutes Archive
In a Nutshell
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, leaked internal research showing the company knowingly amplifies hate speech, misinformation, and political unrest because these drive engagement and profit. The documents reveal that Facebook's algorithms favor anger-inducing content, that safety measures were turned off after the 2020 election, and that Instagram actively harms teenage girls' mental health. Haugen is calling for government regulation, arguing that Facebook has repeatedly chosen profit over public safety.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Frances Hogan is a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a Harvard master's degree in business. She has worked for 15 years at companies including Google and Pinterest. Hogan worked at Facebook until May when she quit and filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging that Facebook's own research shows the company amplifies hate, misinformation, and political unrest while hiding what it knows.
Hogan secretly copied tens of thousands of pages of Facebook internal research before quitting. The documents first appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month. Her complaints are unprecedented because of the volume of private Facebook research she took with her. One complaint alleges that Facebook's Instagram harms teenage girls.
"The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests like making more money."
Hogan decided to take the documents because she knew what was happening inside Facebook and no one on the outside knew. She observed that person after person had tackled these issues internally and been unsuccessful. At some point in 2021, she realized she would need to do this in a systematic way and get out enough evidence that no one could question its authenticity.
Internal Facebook research from this year estimates that the company may action as little as 3-5% of hate and about 0.6-1% of violence and incitement on Facebook, despite being the best in the world at content moderation. Another document states there is evidence from various sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook and its family of apps are affecting societies around the world.
Hogan states that living in an information environment full of angry, hateful, polarizing content erodes civic trust, erodes faith in each other, and erodes the ability to care for each other. She describes the version of Facebook that exists today as tearing societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.
Ethnic violence includes the 2018 Myanmar genocide when the military used Facebook to launch attacks against the Rohingya population. Hogan was recruited by Facebook in 2019 and agreed to take the job only if she could work against misinformation, motivated by having lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.
"I never wanted anyone to feel the pain that I had felt and I had seen how high the stakes were in terms of making sure there was high-quality information on Facebook."
Hogan was assigned to Facebook's civic integrity team, which worked on risks to elections including misinformation. After the 2020 election, the team was dissolved with the explanation that they had made it through the election without riots. Several months later, the January 6th insurrection occurred. This dissolution was the moment Hogan realized she could not trust that Facebook would invest what was needed to keep the platform from being dangerous.
Facebook stated that the work of civic integrity was distributed to other units.
Hogan identifies 2018 as the root of Facebook's problems when the company changed its algorithms. The algorithm decides what users see on their Facebook news feed, selecting from thousands of content options based on what users have engaged with most in the past.
Facebook's algorithm optimizes for content that gets engagement or reaction. The company's own research shows that hateful, divisive, and polarizing content is easier to engage with because it is easier to inspire anger than other emotions. Misinformation and angry content keeps users on the platform longer.
If Facebook changed the algorithm to be safer, people would spend less time on the site, click on fewer ads, and the company would make less money.
Facebook understood the danger to the 2020 election and turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation. However, many of these changes were temporary. As soon as the election was over, the safety settings were turned back off or changed to prioritize growth over safety. Hogan describes this as a betrayal of democracy.
Facebook says some safety systems remained after the election.
After the January 6th insurrection, prosecutors cited Facebook posts as evidence, including photos of armed partisans and text such as "by bullet or ballot, restoration of the republic is coming." Facebook employees expressed frustration on an internal message board, with one stating: "Haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?"
Internal employee responses revealed frustration with company leadership. One employee wrote: "I don't think our leadership team ignores data, ignores dissent, ignores truth." The response was: "Welcome to Facebook. I see you just joined in November 2020. We have been watching wishy-washy actions of company leadership for years now. Colleagues cannot conscience working for a company that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects of its platform. Facebook essentially amplifies the worst of human nature."
No one at Facebook is malevolent, but the incentives are misaligned. Facebook makes more money when users consume more content, and people enjoy engaging with things that elicit emotional reactions. The more anger users are exposed to, the more they interact and consume.
A 2019 internal report states that major political parties across Europe complained that the algorithm change forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook, leading to more extreme policy positions. The parties felt the algorithm was forcing them to take positions they knew were bad for society because they would not win in the marketplace of social media otherwise.
Facebook's internal studies show that Instagram harms teenage girls. One study found that 13.5% of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse, and 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse. The research indicates that as young women consume eating disorder content, they get more depressed, which makes them use the app more, creating a feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more.
Facebook's research states that Instagram is not just dangerous for teenagers but is distinctly worse than other forms of social media. Last week, Facebook postponed plans to create an Instagram for younger children.
Last month, Hogan's lawyers filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The complaints compare internal research with the company's public statements, such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress last March where he stated: "We removed content that could lead to imminent real world harm. We've built an unprecedented third party fact-checking program. The system isn't perfect, but it's the best approach that we've found to address misinformation in line with our country's values."
John Tai, founder of Whistleblower Aid and one of Hogan's lawyers, explains the SEC complaints are based on the requirement that publicly traded companies cannot lie to investors or withhold material information. The SEC regularly brings enforcement actions against companies making material misstatements and omissions that affect investors adversely.
The Dodd-Frank Act created an office of the whistleblower inside the SEC, and one provision states that no company can prohibit employees from communicating with the SEC and sharing internal corporate documents.
Facebook declined an interview but provided a written statement to 60 Minutes stating: "Every day, our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true. If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago."
Facebook is a $1 trillion company, 17 years old, with 2.8 billion users representing 60% of all internet-connected people on Earth. Hogan plans to testify before Congress this week and believes the federal government should impose regulations.
"Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently. Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety. It is subsidizing. It is paying for its profits with our safety. I'm hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. That's my hope."
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