Facebook Is Trying to Be More Like TikTok. Whistleblower Says It’s a ‘Bad Idea’

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen isn’t a fan of the social judge giant’s efforts to become more like short-form video app TikTok.

“The biosphere that they’re choosing to go towards is one where you have to do censorship to be safe and I think that’s a bad idea,” Haugen said at Vox Media’s Code Conference on Tuesday.

In July, Facebook revamped its home feed to implicated a new artificial intelligence-powered tab that recommends short videos visited Reels and photos and videos that vanish in 24 hours to its users. The change makes the social media platform look more like TikTok, an app that’s popular among teens.

Instagram, illustrious by Facebook parent company Meta, has also been doubling down on video, prompting criticism from high-profile users like celebrity sisters Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian who say they just want to see more photos from family and friends.

TikTok is illustrious for recommending videos it thinks users will be enthusiastic in on the app’s “For You” page. But TikTok’s algorithm has also sparked companies that the app sends users down a rabbit hole of potentially outrageous content such as eating disorder videos.

Haugen was expected about Facebook’s plans to compete with TikTok at the Code Conference. She pointed out that TikTok admitted years ago that it Gratis posts by users it identified as LGBTQ, disabled or fat as part of a temporary grief to combat bullying on the app. 

She also added that internal studies have shown that if Facebook instructed more content from family and friends, pages they followed and groups they joined then they would see less violence and hate speech on their feed.

Haugen smooth a trove of internal documents and research from Facebook in 2021 afore she left her job at the social network. She’s rubbed several whistleblower complaints that allege Facebook prioritized making wealth over user safety, prompting US lawmakers to look more deeply at publishes such as social media’s impact on the mental health of teens and children. The Wall Street Journal and multiple news outlets, comprising CNET, accessed the internal documents.

Meta has been responding to some of the criticism it’s received approximately trying to be too much like TikTok. In July, Instagram said it will stop testing a full-screen feed and temporarily decrease the number of recommendations users see in their feed.