Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who released documents revealing that Facebook was aware that the platform helped cause ethnic violence and mental health issues, spoke at the University Wednesday in a talk entitled “Reforming Social Media From the Inside.” The event was one of the first in a series of planned talks at university campuses by Haugen.
President Christina Paxson P’19 opened the talk, and was followed by Mark Blyth, director of the William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance, who introduced Haugen.
Haugen spoke about the harm of Facebook, possible reforms and the ways students and Facebook employees alike can make a difference.
Haugen said that Facebook is especially damaging in developing countries, where Facebook offers free internet for “a billion people in the world, maybe more,” to use its platform.
As a result, for many, stopping their use of Facebook is not an option, as “for a majority of languages in the world, 80% to 90% of all the content available on the internet in that language is only on Facebook,” Haugen said in an interview with The Herald.
And according to Haugen, 87% of Facebook’s fall 2020 budget to curb misinformation was focused on American content — even though Americans only comprise about 10% of Facebook users — because Facebook is more concerned about regulatory bodies in the United States and the European Union than in developing countries. As a result, the U.S. has “the cleanest version of Facebook in...
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