How Facebook’s quest for profits is paved on hate and lies - New revelations by a whistleblower prove that the social media platform clearly understands its negative impact on society, but that profits are a greater lure than preserving democracy
Based on what Haugen has revealed, Gonzálezthat “Facebook had a very clear picture about the major societal harms that its platform was causing.” And, worse, the company “largely decided to do nothing to mitigate those problems, and then it proceeded to lie and mislead the US public, including members of Congress.”
González is hopeful that Haugen’s decision to become a whistleblower will have a positive impact on an issue that has stymied Congress. During Haugen’s testimony to a Senate panel on October 5, she faced largely reasonable and thoughtful questioning from lawmakers with little of the partisan political grandstanding that has marked many hearings on social media-based misinformation. “We saw senators from both sides of the aisle asking serious questions,” she said.
What González hopes is that Congress passes a data privacy law that treats the protection of data gathered from users as a civil right. This is critical because Facebook makes its money from selling user data to advertisers, and González wants to see that “our personal data and the personal data of our children isn’t used to push damaging content… that doesn’t provoke hate and violence and spread massive amounts of lies.
The calculus of Facebook’s intent is very simple. In spite of Zuckerberg’s denials, González says, “The system is built on a hate-and-lie-for-profit model, and Facebook has made a decision that it would rather make money than keep people safe.” It isn’t as though Facebook is selling hate because it has an agenda to destroy democracy. It’s just that destroying democracy is not a deal breaker when huge profits are at stake.
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