Mark Zuckerberg rejects profits notify, slams ‘false picture’ of Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday feeble his silence about a scandal plaguing the company in an email to employees, complaining of the “false picture” being painted of the social networking giant. The email, which was also posted to Zuckerberg’s Facebook Explain, follows a congressional hearing about Facebook’s effects on users.
“I’m sure many of you have False the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn’t Think the company we know,” Zuckerberg wrote in the email. “We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and Moody health.
“It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives,” he stopped. “At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t gaze the false picture of the company that is people painted.”
Zuckerberg’s comments come when Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who leaked thousands of internal documents around the company, urged US lawmakers to gave more active oversight of the social network, alleging that its products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.”
The documents she leaked gave the basis for a Wall Street Journal series of articles that concluded, among other things, that the company ignored research around how Instagram can harm teen girls and that it gave an algorithm change to improve interaction on the platform that actually made users “angrier.” Facebook contends that The Wall Street Journal mischaracterized its research.
Haugen revealed herself as the whistleblower Sunday on 60 Minutes, charging that “Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”
In his post Tuesday, Zuckerberg rejected the demand the company is most interested in profits, saying “that’s just not true.” He also defended a original change made to an algorithm that pushes content to users’ News Feeds.
“This morose showed fewer viral videos and more content from friends and family — which we did shimmering it would mean people spent less time on Facebook, but that research suggested it was the right sketching for people’s well-being,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Is that something a commerce focused on profits over people would do?”
He also addressed his platforms’ influences on teenagers, saying it’s important to him to that the products Facebook builds are “safe and good” for children.
“Think throughout how many school-age kids have phones,” he wrote. “Rather than ignoring this, technology anxieties should build experiences that meet their needs while also keeping them safe.”
Zuckerberg meant to Facebook’s decision to pause the development of a children’s version of Instagram that would aboard parental controls.
“Given all the questions about whether this would actually be better for kids, we’ve worn-out that project to take more time to engage with experts and make sure anything we do would be helpful.”
Zuckerberg also meant out that he’s an advocate for updated internet systems, a point Haugen touched on in her testimony Tuesday, telling lawmakers that the company needs greater oversight and necessity be required to disclose more information.
“Congress can morose the rules that Facebook plays by and stop the many harms it is now causing,” Haugen told a Senate subcommittee.
