Facebook Hides Data Showing It Harms Users. Outside Scholars Need Access.

Home 63

(This opinion essay was first published for The Washington Post on October 5, 2021.)

The disclosures made by whistleblower Frances Haugen about Facebook — first to the Wall Street Journal and then to “60 Minutes” — ought to be the stuff of shareholders’ nightmares: When she left Facebook, she took with her documents showing, for example, that Facebook knew Instagram was making girls’ body-image issues worse, that internal investigators knew a Mexican drug cartel was using the platform to recruit hit men and that the company misled its own oversight board about having a separate content appeals process for a large number of influential users. (Haugen is scheduled to appear before a Congressional panel on Tuesday.)

(Continue reading the opinion essay on The Washington Post’s page here.)