STRONG REGULATION NEEDED TO PROTECT US FROM META AND FACEBOOK

The harm that Facebook, Meta’s other platforms, and other social media do to children and youth, our society and politics, as well as to people and countries around the world, is well documented. The evidence continues to mount as new whistleblowers emerge and share inside information. Clearly, Meta (and other social media companies) are far more committed to maximizing profits than they are to minimizing harm.

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The harm that Facebook, Meta’s other platforms, and other social media do to children and youth is well documented, as this previous post covered. However, the harm to our society and politics, as well as to people and countries around the world, goes well beyond that and is long-standing. (See previous posts from 2022 and 2020 on Facebook’s knowing spread of divisive disinformation and right-wing content.) It’s clear that Meta and other social media companies are far more interested in maximizing profits than minimizing harm, such as avoiding spreading misinformation while fostering social division and conflict that sometimes lead to violence.

Meta has been in the news recently because more whistleblowers and former employees have come forward to report (again) that Meta CEO and owner Mark Zuckerberg and other senior Meta executives have repeatedly lied about the negative effects of their platforms and their knowledge of the harms caused for children, from spreading misinformation, and from fostering social division.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading a book about Facebook, Careless People: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook from 2011 - 2018. Perhaps her most poignant revelation is that “most leaders at Facebook … severely limit [their] kids’ access to screens, let alone social media accounts. … which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.” (p. 103-104)

Wynn-Williams reports on sexual harassment in the largely male world of Facebook, which senior management ignores (to say the least). She also documents Facebook’s role in:

·       The 2016 Trump campaign when Facebook staff were embedded at the campaign, which some people credit with Trump’s winning the election. (p. 264)

·       The violence and undermining of democracy in Myanmar from 2014 – 2017 due to Facebook’s failure to monitor and moderate content. This culminated in tens of thousands of deaths, untold atrocities, and the slaughter of Muslims and particularly the Rohingya people. The U.N. report on these human rights violations devotes over twenty pages to the role Facebook played in spreading hate. (p. 357-358)

·       Working with the Chinese government on censorship and surveillance to get it to allow Facebook in China. So desperate was Zuckerberg to get into the Chinese market that he gave the Chinese government access to user data that he had refused to give to other governments and that Facebook “aggressively fought against providing to the US government, even after receiving National Security Letters demanding it in specific cases.” (p. 311) Furthermore, Wynn-Williams notes that “Facebook has said [many things] are simply impossible when Congress and its own government have asked – on content, data sharing, privacy, censorship, and encryption – and yet its leadership are handing them all to China on a silver platter.” (p. 313) Facebook was very concerned about all of this leaking because “if it leaks we [Facebook] won’t be able to keep doing what we’re doing. … [it would] highlight differences in what we say to the public vs what we do.” (p. 313) When preparing Zuckerberg for congressional testimony about Facebook’s plans for China, Wynn-Williams reports that “No one suggests telling the truth … There seems to be no compunction about misleading Congress. Presumably because the team assumes they’ll never be caught …”. (p. 319)

·       Censoring content in Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea at the request of senior government officials, largely solely at Zuckerberg’s discretion. (p. 158-164)

·       Selling advertisers on Facebook’s capabilities to target emotionally vulnerable teens while publicly denying that it was doing so. Advertisers know that people buy more when they are feeling insecure, “and it’s seen as an asset that Facebook knows when that is and can target ads.” (p. 334) While “this sort of ad targeting is commonplace at Facebook … it pretends the opposite: ‘We have opened an investigation to understand the process failure and improve our oversight.’” A follow up statement was “a flat-out lie: ‘Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state.’” (p. 336-337)

Wynn-Williams documents that time and again Zuckerberg and other Meta senior executives lie about and distort what Meta is doing, the harm it’s causing, and their knowledge of the harm. They lie to the media and the public, they lie in congressional testimony, and they lie internally to their own employees. They also attack government officials and human rights groups that oppose the expansion or advocate regulation of Facebook and Meta’s other platforms. (p. 206-212) She also writes that “Facebook’s leadership could be utterly indifferent to the consequences of their decisions.”, hence the book’s title Careless People. (p. 307) In 2017, one of the findings of worldwide consumer focus groups was that “The idea that Facebook cares about people’s privacy is not believable anywhere.” (p. 315)

In response to the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, Utah Governor Spencer Cox made the point that social media is designed to amplify hate and division. They do this because social media companies know that this is the most effective way to maximize profits. Social media algorithms are designed to feed you stories that alarm and upset you because that results in your spending more time on the social media platform. [1]

I encourage you to contact your Representative and Senators in Congress and ask them to support strong regulation of the social media platforms to stop them from continuing to harm our children and youth, our society, and our politics and elections.

You can find contact information for your U.S. Representative at  http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your U.S. Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[1]      Hubbell, R., 9/15/25, “Leaning into resistance during troubled times,” Today’s Edition Newsletter (https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/leaning-into-resistance-during-troubled)