Meta’s quest to recruit younger users has clashed with pressure to keep children and teens safe on social networks.
By Naomi Mix, The Washington PostArturo Bejar, former Facebook employee and consultant for Instagram, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law during a hearing to examine social media and the teen mental health crisis, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The internal dispute over how to attract kids to social media safely will return to the spotlight Tuesday when a former senior engineering and product leader at Meta testifies during a Senate hearing on the connection between social media and teens’ mental health. which allege Meta built addictive features into its apps, and a suite of lawsuits from parents and school districts accusing platforms of playing a critical role in exacerbating the teen mental health crisis.
“Our services have gotten dialed to be the best for the most people who use them rather than specifically for young adults,” Zuckerberg said in the October 2021 announcement, citing competition with TikTok. “It can be tempting for company leaders to look at untapped youth markets as an easy way to drive growth, while ignoring their specific developmental needs,” said Vaishnavi J, a technology policy adviser who was Meta’s head of youth policy.
Instead, Béjar and his team recommended letting users define negative interactions themselves using a new approach: the Bad Experiences and Encounters Framework. It relied on users relaying experiences with bullying, unwanted advances, violence and misinformation among other harms, according to documents shared with The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal first reported on these documents.
Though the company still uses prevalence rates, Stone said user perception surveys have informed safety measures, including an artificial intelligence tool that notifies users when their comment may be considered offensive before it’s posted. The company says it reduces the visibility of potentially problematic content that doesn’t break its rules.
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Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram's harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, Arturo Bejar, then a contractor at the social media giant, sent an email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same...
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Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram's harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, Arturo Bejar, then a contractor at the social media giant, sent an email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.
Read more »
Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram's harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, Arturo Bejar, then a contractor at the social media giant, sent an email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.
Read more »
Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram's harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, Arturo Bejar, then a contractor at the social media giant, sent an email to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.
Read more »
Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram’s harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021,
Read more »
Former Meta engineering leader to testify before Congress on Instagram's harms to teensOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, Arturo Be
Read more »