Facebook has taken 'Big Tobacco's playbook' and 'weaponized childhood vulnerabilities': senator
Facebook's (FB) global head of safety faced tough questions Thursday from U.S. senators, who accused the social networking giant of taking a page from Big Tobacco in its effort to recruit children to its Instagram platform.
The hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection followed a series of reports by The Wall Street Journal pointing to internal Facebook research that shows the company is aware of deleterious effects Instagram has on teens, especially teenage girls.
“Facebook has taken ‘Big Tobacco’s’ playbook,” Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in his opening remarks. “It has hidden its own research on addiction and the toxic effects on its products. It has attempted to deceive the public and us in Congress, and what it knows. And it has weaponized childhood vulnerabilities against children themselves.”
Facebook’s latest controversy kicked off when The Journal published internal Facebook research showing that 32% of teenage girls surveyed by the company reported that Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies.
“Facebook knows that its services are actively harming children,” ranking member Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN said. “How do they know this? Because they did their own research.”
Facebook’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, however, repeatedly pushed back on the claim that the research shows Instagram is harmful for children.
“The research showed that many teens said that Instagram is helping them with hard issues that are so common to being a teen,” she said, adding that teen girls said the platform made them feel better about 11 out of 12 issues ranging from loneliness, sadness, anxiety, and eating disorders.
Davis further said that Facebook has built resources for suicide prevention and eating disorders for users, and is working on a means to keep users from dwelling on negative topics while using the app and instead guide them to uplifting content.
But the senators weren’t accepting Davis’ responses.
Blumenthal shot back saying, “This research is a bombshell. Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children and it has concealed those facts and findings.”
The backlash surrounding Facebook and Instagram has been especially loud following The Journal’s report because Facebook had planned to release a version of Instagram for children under 13.
Instagram currently restricts children under 13 from joining the platform; however, it said it recognizes that those kids do so anyway by falsifying their ages. The company says that it would be beneficial for kids and their parents if a version of Instagram existed for children under 13 that parents can have better control over.
But Instagram also stands to benefit from having younger children use its service, as doing so could see them stay with the platform for years. And as they get older and graduate to the full version of Instagram, their data could be used to sell advertisements, Facebook’s primary source of revenue.
In addition to issues regarding teens, Blackburn focused on reporting by The Journal that showed that Facebook was being used in other countries to facilitate human trafficking.
Davis said that she didn’t agree with that characterization and that Facebook has policies against trafficking.
But Blackburn pushed back, saying the information from The Journal’s reporting came from Facebook itself.
“This is your company’s reporting,” Blackburn said. “You knew this was there. But you didn’t do anything about it.”
Facebook’s latest controversy is just one of a number of fires engulfing the company. The world’s largest social media firm is also facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into alleged antitrust practices related to what the commission calls a buy-or-bury scheme that saw Facebook either buy up or crush smaller competitors it saw as potential future threats.
The company has also taken a hit from investors recently after reporting that changes Apple made to its app privacy settings put a dent into Facebook’s ability to collect user data.
Despite all of that, Facebook's stock is up more than 24% year-to-date, easily outpacing the broader S&P 500, which is up about 16%.
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