“The last thing they see at night is someone being cruel to them. What you find is that when people are sent targeted misinformation to a community, it can make it hard to reintegrate into wider society because now you don’t have shared facts.”Īmid growing concerns about the impact of Instagram on the mental health and body image of teenagers, Haugen said Facebook’s own research likened the app’s young users to addicts who feel unable to step away from a service that makes them unhappy. “I am deeply concerned that they have made a product that can lead people away from their real communities and isolate them in these rabbit holes and these filter bubbles. These can encourage small and intense communities that breed conspiracy theories, she said. She warned that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and used by millions of children worldwide, may never be safe for pre-teens.Īddressing a group of MPs and peers on Monday, Haugen said much of the blame for the world’s increasingly polarised politics lay with social networks and the radicalising impact of services such as Facebook Groups. She added: “Until we bring in a counterweight, these things will be operated for the shareholders’ interest and not the public interest.”
The company’s internal culture prioritised profitability over its impact on the wider world, said Haugen, and “there is no will at the top to make sure these systems are run in an adequately safe way”.
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