The whistleblower behind “bombshell” disclosures that have rocked Facebook in recent weeks spent much of Tuesday's three-hour hearing explaining to Congress how Facebook could fix itself.

While the hearing was far from the first time a Facebook critic has briefed lawmakers, her insider knowledge and expertise in algorithm design made her particularly effective. Her background as part of the company’s civic integrity team meant she was intimately familiar with some of the biggest problems on Facebook.

During the hearing, Haugen spoke in detail about Facebook’s algorithms and other internal systems that have hampered its efforts to slow misinformation and other problematic content. She also praised the company’s researchers, calling them “heroes,” and said Facebook should be required to make their work public.

Remove algorithmic ranking and go back to chronological feeds

One of the most notable aspects of Haugen’s testimony was her expertise, which gives her a nuanced understanding of how algorithms work and the often unintended consequences of using them.

“I hope we will discuss as to whether there is such a thing as a safe algorithm,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said at the start of the hearing. While Haugen never addressed that question directly, she did weigh on the ranking algorithms that power the feeds in Facebook and Instagram. She noted that Facebook’s own research has found that “engagement-based ranking on Instagram can lead children from very innocuous topics like healthy recipes… to anorexia-promoting content over a very short period of time.”

She also said that Facebook’s AI-based moderation tools were much less effective than what the company has publicly portrayed. “We've seen from repeated documents within my disclosures that Facebook's AI systems only catch a very tiny minority of offending content,” Haugen said. “Best case scenario, in the case of something like hate speech, at most they will ever get to 10 to 20%.”

To address this, Haugen said that Facebook could move to a chronological feed where posts are ordered by recency, rather than what is most likely to get engagement. “I'm a strong proponent of chronological ranking, or ordering by time with a little bit of spam demotion, because I think we don't want computers deciding what we focus on,” Haugen said.

She noted that Facebook would likely resist such a plan because content that gets more engagement is better for their platform because it causes people to post and comment more. “I've spent most of my career working on systems like engagement-based ranking,” Haugen said. “When I come to you and say these things, I’m basically damning 10 years of my own work.”

TOM BRENNER via Getty Images

Reform Section 230

In a similar vein, Haugen said that Section 230 — the 1996 law that protects companies from being liable for what their users say and do on their platforms — should be reformed “to make Facebook responsible for the consequences of their intentional ranking decisions.” She said that such a law would likely “get rid of engagement-based ranking” because it would become too big of a liability for the company.

At the same time, she cautioned lawmakers to not let Facebook “trick” them into believing that changing Section 230 alone would be enough to address the scope of its problems. She also noted that using the law to police Facebook’s algorithms could be easier than trying to address specific types of content. “User generated content is something that companies have less control over, they have 100% control over their algorithms,” Haugen said.

The focus on Section 230 is significant because lawmakers from both parties have proposed various changes to the law. During the hearing, Blumenthal indicated that he too supported “narrowing this sweeping immunity when platforms’ algorithms amplify illegal conduct.” Senator Amy Klobuchar has also proposed ending 230 protections for vaccine and health misinformation. Meanwhile, Republicans have tried to eliminate Section 230 for very different reasons.

Slow down virality

Likewise, Haugen suggested that Facebook should slow down its platform with “soft interventions” that would add small bits of friction to the platform. She pointed to Twitter’s “read before sharing” prompts as the kind of measure that can reduce the spread of misinformation.

“Small actions like that friction don't require picking good ideas and bad ideas,” she said. “They just make the platform less twitchy, less reactive. And Facebook's internal research says that each one of those small actions dramatically reduces misinformation, hate speech and violence-inciting content on the platform.”

Facebook has taken these steps in the past. Notably, it applied these “break glass” measures in the days after the presidential election, though the company rolled some of them back the following month. The company implemented similar changes again, less than a month later, in the aftermath of the insurrection January 6th.

Huagen said that Facebook has mischaracterized these changes as being harmful to free speech, when in fact the company is concerned because it “wanted that growth back.” During the hearing, she said that Mark Zuckerberg had been personally briefed on just how impactful changes like this could be. But, she said, he prioritized the platform’s growth “over changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation and other inciting content.”

Open Facebook’s research to people outside the company

Access to Facebook’s data has become a hot button issue in recent weeks as researchers outside the company have complained that the company is stifling independent research. Haugen said the social network should work toward making its own internal research available to the public.

She proposed that there should be a set period of time — she suggested as long as 18 months — when Facebook is able to keep its research under wraps. But then the company should make it accessible to those outside the company.

“I believe in collaboration with academics and other researchers that we can develop privacy-conscious ways of exposing radically more data that is available today,” Haugen said. “It is important for our ability to understand how algorithms work, how Facebook shapes the information, we get to see that we have these data sets to be publicly available for scrutiny.”

She went on to say that Facebook's researchers are among its “biggest heroes” because “they are boldly asking real questions and willing to say awkward truths.” She said it was “unacceptable” that the company has been “throwing them under the bus” in its effort to downplay her disclosures.

Facebook

A dedicated ‘oversight body’

Besides internal changes, Haugen also said that there should be a dedicated “oversight body” with the power to oversee social media platforms. She said that such a group within an agency like the Federal Trade Commission could provide “a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like this.”

“Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what's happening inside of Facebook, are people who grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest or another social media company,” she said.

Importantly, this “oversight body” would be separate from the Facebook-created Oversight Board, which advises Facebook on specific content decisions. While Facebook has said the creation of the Oversight Board is proof it’s trying to self-regulate, Haugen wrote in prepared remarks that the Oversight Board “is as blind as the public” when it comes to truly knowing what happens inside of the company.

It’s also worth noting that Haugen said she was opposed to efforts to break up Facebook. She said that separating Facebook and Instagram would likely result in more advertisers flocking to Instagram, which could deplete Facebook’s resources for making changes to improve its platform.

What’s next

While it’s unclear which, if any, of Haugen’s recommendations Congress will act on, her disclosures have already caught the attention of regulators. In addition to providing documents to Congress, she has also given documents to the Securities and Exchange Committee. She has alleged that Zuckerberg and other executives have “misled investors and the public about its role perpetuating misinformation and violent extremism relating to the 2020 election and January 6th insurrection," according to SEC filings published by 60 Minutes.

Meanwhile, Facebook has continued to push back on Haugen’s claims. A week after an executive told lawmakers that “this is not bombshell research,” the company tried to discredit Haugen more directly. In a statement, Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications Lena Pietsch, said Haugen “worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives. We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about.” Pietsch added that “it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet.”

In an appearance on CNN following the hearing, Facebook VP Monika Bickert referred to Haugen’s disclosures as “stolen documents” and said the company’s research had been “mischaracterized.” Later that night, Zuckerberg publicly weighed in for the first time since The Wall Street Journal began publishing stories based on Haugen's disclosures (Zuckerberg did once refer to earlier coverage of the scandals, complaining that a news article has mistakenly described his hydrofoil as an "electric surfboard.") In his first substantive statement, he said "many of the claims don't make any sense," and that "the argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical." 

It could still get more difficult for Facebook to counter Haugen, though, particularly if new documents become public. Her letter to the SEC suggests that Facebook knew much more about QAnon and violent extremism on its platform than it let on, as Vicereported earlier. Haugen may also make appearances in front of lawmakers in other countries, too. European lawmakers, many of whom have expressed similar concerns as their US counterparts, have also indicated they want to talk to Haugen and conduct new investigations of their own.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't testify at today's whistleblower hearing, but he has posted a lengthy reply to the accusations being lobbed at the company. He said the Frances Haugen's claims don't make sense and that they paint a "false picture" of the social network. "At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true," he wrote in his post. The Facebook chief cited the Meaningful Social Interactions (MSI) update to News Feed, which was designed to show fewer viral videos and more content from friends and family. 

He said the company went through with the change knowing that it would make people spend less time on the website, because research suggested it was the right thing thing to do for people's well-being. In Haugen's testimony, she painted MSI in a less flattering light. She said Zuckerberg chose to apply "metrics defined by Facebook" like MSI "over changes that would have significantly decreased misinformation and other inciting content." The whistleblower said the CEO was presented with solutions to make Facebook "less viral, less twitchy," but he decided not to use them because they had a negative impact on the MSI metric. 

In the SEC complaint she filed, Haugen claimed that Facebook allowed "hateful" and "divisive" content, because it is "easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions." Zuckerberg addressed that in his post, as well, calling it "deeply illogical." Facebook makes money from ads, he said, and advertisers apparently tell the company that they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content. 

In addition, Zuckerberg said the research into how Instagram affects young people was mischaracterized. He didn't explicitly mention it, but The Wall Street Journal published an article in mid-September about how it knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls based on internal documents detailing Facebook's own research. The social network eventually published a couple of documents from that research, but Haugen provided Congress with four more. Zuckerberg defended the platform, writing that many teens the company heard from actually "feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced."

Haugen, who joined Facebook in 2019, worked on democracy and misinformation issues when she was with the company. She brought "tens of thousands" of pages of internal Facebook documents to Whistleblower Aid founder John Tye in addition to filing a whistleblower complaint with the SEC. There were several reports that came out based on those documents, including the existence of a VIP program that enabled high-profile users to skirt Facebook's rules. Haugen also accused Facebook of contributing to election misinformation and the January 6th US Capitol riots.

As for Zuckerberg, part of his post reads:

"If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space — even ones larger than us? If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?"

Filming is underway on the first feature-length movie to be shot in space after Russian actor Yulia Sherepild and director Klim Shipenko docked at the International Space Station. Their movie, The Challenge, will feature around 35-40 minutes of scenes filmed on the space station, according to The New York Times. The film is about a surgeon (Sherepild) who goes on an emergency ISS mission to save the life of a cosmonaut (Shipenko).

The two cosmonauts who were already on the ISS captured a shot as Peresild (or her character) emerged from the capsule and entered the station. Sherepild and Shipenko will film scenes over the next couple of weeks before returning to Earth on October 17th.

Other projects have been filmed on the ISS, including documentaries, virtual reality projects and a short called Apogee of Fear. Tom Cruise hoped to make the first feature film in space with the help of NASA and SpaceX, but the Russian team beat him to the punch. Russia's Roscosmos agency announced a plan to send an actor to the ISS soon after word emerged about Cruise's movie in May 2020.

Time will tell whether The Challenge is any good. Regardless, the creatives behind the project have carved out their own little slice of history.

If you turn to Facebook Gaming to watch other people play your favorite games, you’ll now see creators collaborate on joint streams. Facebook is introducing support for co-streaming. The feature allows up to four accounts to stream together concurrently. With today’s rollout, co-streaming is available to all content creators, not just those enrolled in Facebook’s partner program. You can access the functionality search for and tag other creators through the Live Producer left rail, in addition to the Gaming Tab and Stream Dashboard of the edit stream module.

“With co-streaming, we aim to increase discoverability for creators, encourage collaboration between creators and elevate the overall viewing experience for everyone,” the company said in a blog post. The addition of co-streaming support is a case of Facebook playing catch up. Twitch has offered similar functionality through its Squad Stream feature since 2019. It’s also worth pointing out the idea itself isn’t new. While it’s no longer around, OnLive introduced a multi-view feature back in 2012. All the same, it’s a significant addition for Facebook Gaming, particularly as it continues to try to compete with Twitch.

Instagram may have been down for hours, but it's back with an arguably overdue change to how the social network handles videos. The Facebook brand is merging its long-form IGTV format with the regular videos from your feed, leaving just one format for all Instagram footage — you won't have to distinguish between the two. We've asked Instagram if this will lead to longer videos playing directly in your feed, but there will always be a Video tab in profiles to explore more content.

The move might help Instagram-based creators, too. While they'll still have to produce long-form video to qualify for ads (now called Instagram In-Stream video ads), they should have an easier time reaching viewers who would have glossed over IGTV in the past. Instagram is also merging post and video insights into a single metric.

You may have an easier time polishing that video, too. Instagram is bringing a few common editing features to its videos, including trimming, filters, location tags and people tags. Still images have had filters and tags for a while, of course, but this theoretically puts moving pictures more on par. You may have an easier time finding videos linked to a friend or a memorable concert.

The merger could boost uptake for Instagram video. IGTV demand wasn't what Instagram expected, and this update makes the longer video format more accessible, not to mention less confusing. Creators might be more inclined to share videos on Instagram as a result — and that might help the social media giant better compete against TikTok, YouTube and other video-focused heavyweights.

Facebook services seem to be slowly coming back online after one of the biggest outages in recent memory. Facebook, Instagram and Messenger’s apps appear to be working again, though the websites are loading more slowly than usual. Meanwhile, WhatsApp's website seems to be back, but the app is still having issues connecting. 

As of 6:05pm ET Monday, the "Facebook for Business Status" page was still showing "major disruptions," to the social network's core services. But that was still an improvement from earlier in the day when the website was offline entirely. 

Facebook didn’t immediately comment or elaborate on the cause of the outage. In an earlier tweet, the company’s outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Michael Schroepfer, cited “networking issues.”

The outage lasted more than six hours, taking down Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. It also wreaked havoc on the company internally, with employees reportedly unable to access emails, Workplace and other tools. The New York Timesreported that employees were also physically locked out of offices as workers’ badges stopped working.

It also shaved billions of dollars off of Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth as Facebook’s stock tanked, Bloomberg reported. Elsewhere, the company is still reeling from the fallout of a whistleblower who has accused the company of prioritizing “profits over safety.” The whistleblower was The Wall Street Journal’s primary source for several articles that details how Instagram is harmful to teens and the company’s controversial “cross check” program that allows high profile users to break its rules.

Developing...

If you can't access Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp, you're not the only one. Starting at approximately 11:38AM ET, Downdetector began logging a spike in outage reports across all four Facebook-owned services. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for the company, said at 12:07PM ET that the company was working quickly to resolve the issue but didn't mention what was at the root of the problem. We've reached out to Facebook for more information on the outage.

Back in April, Netflix released its Play Something feature for TV devices with the promise of making it available on mobile in the near future. If you've been waiting for it to make its way to your phone, you'll be thrilled to know that the time has come: The streaming giant's shuffle play functionality will start rolling out to all Android users around the world today. 

Streaming services have such a wide variety of choices, which keep growing every day, that scrolling through them and deciding on what to play could take hours. If you don't have anything specific to watch at the moment, the Play Something feature could held you fend off decision paralysis and prevent you from wasting what little time you have to relax. Just tap it to watch something the service's algorithm thinks you might enjoy based on your history.

Netflix started testing the feature for both adult and kids' profiles on Android in May, and a spokesperson told us testing for iOS will begin in the coming months. According to the streaming giant, users have been loving its shuffle play function for leading them to hidden gems they might not have found otherwise. Of course, the opposite could also be true if it turns out that Netflix's algorithm doesn't know you at all. 

You can find the floating Play Something button at different places within the app, including the home screen. If you're viewing the page of a specific show, a button that says Play Something Else will show up. Patrick Flemming, Netflix's Director of Product Innovation, said in a statement:

"Play Something helps Netflix members discover new shows and movies when they don’t want to make decisions. Today, we're excited to bring this feature to Android, too - choosing what to watch on your phone has never been easier."

In addition, Netflix is launching Fast Laughs, its TikTok-style comedy feed that pulls funny clips from its catalog, for Android. Previously exclusive for iOS users, the feature will be available for Android in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, Philippines and other select markets. 

Internal documents published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently revealed that Facebook allowed VIPs to break its rules and that it was aware of how Instagram affected the mental health of teens. Now, the whistleblower who brought that information to light has revealed herself as Frances Haugen in an interview with 60 Minutes, the New York Times has reported.

"I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than what I had seen before," Haugen told the NYT. "Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety." 

Haugen joined Facebook in 2019, working on democracy and misinformation issues, while also handling counterespionage, according to a personal website and Twitter account she and her team set up. She worked as a Facebook product manager and left the company in May. 

She first brought "tens of thousands" of pages of internal Facebook documents to Whistleblower Aid founder John Tye, requesting legal protection and help in releasing the information. The trove included internal company research, slide decks, cover letters and more. She also filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accusing Facebook of taking internal actions that didn't match its public statements. 

In the SEC complaint, Haugen compared Facebook's internal research and documents to public statements and disclosures made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. In one example, she said that Facebook contributed to election misinformation and the January 6th US Capitol insurrection. 

"Facebook has publicized its work to combat misinformation and violent extremism relating to the 2020 election and insurrection," she wrote in a cover letter on the subject. " In reality, Facebook knew its algorithms and platforms promoted this type of harmful content, and it failed to deploy internally recommended or lasting countermeasures."

On top of being in touch with the SEC's whistleblower office, which normally provides protections for corporate tipsters, she and her legal team contacted Senators Richard Blumenthal (D) and Marsha Blackburn (R). She also spoke to lawmakers in France and Britain, along with a member of the European parliament. 

Facebook, which has struggled to quell leaks of late, preemptively pushed back ahead of the 60 Minutes interview, calling the accusations "misleading." VP for policy and global affairs Nick Clegg told CNN that Facebook represented "the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity" and that it was trying to "mitigate the bad, reduce it and amplify the good." He added that it was "ludicrous" to blame January 6th on social media.

In a statement to the New York Times, Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said it was continuing "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." On Tuesday, December 5th, Haugen is set to testify in Congress about issues surrounding Facebook's impact on young users. 

Classic '90s sitcom Seinfeldjust landed on Netflix after a six-year run on Hulu. Given that the show was filmed years before HD was a thing, it was originally displayed in a 4:3 aspect ratio on TV (and the DVD sets that came years later). But on Netflix, the show has been cropped into a 16:9 widescreen format to fit on modern TVs. As noted by Rolling Stone, that means some visual gags have literally been erased. 

Twitter users @boriskarkov and @Thatoneguy64 succinctly pointed out the problem with a specific episode called "The Pothole." In the episode, George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld are trying to find George's lost keys, which were dropped in a pothole that was then paved over. In a crop where George wildly yells at the pothole, the Netflix crop removes the pothole entirely. The 16:9 aspect ratio probably also cuts out some other gags in the series — or at the very least, it might be a jarring experience for people used to how the show originally looked.

Of course, this isn't a new problem. Crops of Seinfeld have been on cable TV for years, and Hulu also showed the series in 16:9, as well. Given Netflix's popularity, Seinfeld is getting lots of extra attention right now, and thus a bunch of new viewers are probably checking it out who might not have seen it on Hulu. A similar controversy happened in late 2019 when the entire run of The Simpsons hit Disney+. After plenty of complaints about missed visual gags, Disney eventually released the seasons that aired in 4:3 in their original aspect ratio. Hopefully Netflix will do the same thing with Seinfeld — but in the meantime, as with many classic shows, the most authentic way to watch them is probably on DVD.