Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen advises Elon Musk to publish Twitter’s algorithm, says social media is Afraid of government intervention because accountability would mean a 20% drop in profit margins
Facebook whistleblower thinks Elon Musk should publish Twitter’s algorithm
Claims that social media doesn’t want transparency because it hurts profitability
Frances Haugen, who worked for Facebook before sounding the alarm, said government action could slash Facebook’s profits from 35% to 15%
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The woman who exposed Facebook malpractice last year advises Elon Musk to expose Twitter’s algorithm if he really wants to have an open online public square.
Frances Haugen also said social media sites are pushing back so fiercely on government intervention because liability could mean a sharp drop in profit margins by at least 20 percent.
The former product manager of Facebook’s citizen integrity team took part in a special edition of NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning focusing on “how social media is shaping our politics.” Haugen is especially poised to speak on the subject after blowing the whistle on what she described as a pattern of Facebook putting profit before public safety.
She disclosed tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021.
“One of the most important things Elon Musk could do to prove he wants the public square is he can publish the algorithms,” Haugen said.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said the social media company fears government intervention as it could cut their profits by 20%
“Open source,” she urged NBC’s Chuck Todd. “He would have more help. It would be cheaper for him. He would be more profitable.’
Democratic Senator Amy Klonuchar, a longtime advocate for more regulation of tech companies, said these platforms should be treated like “publishers.”
“Let’s just face the facts and stop pretending they’re a little company in a garage,” she told Todd on the Sunday Meet the Press special broadcast.
Haugen said companies like Facebook are so preoccupied with growing and making even bigger profits that it makes them “scared” to take action “because they’re going to reduce a company’s profitability a little bit.”
“Facebook is afraid that if we really had transparency, if we were really accountable, they wouldn’t be a company with a 35 percent profit margin. They would be a 15 percent profit margin business,” she continued.
Haugen advised that Elon Musk (pictured Feb. 10, 2022) should make the Twitter algorithm public if he wants to create an open online public square
“The way to think about safety on social media platforms is there are a lot of little choices where you make them and you lose 0.1 percent of the profit, 0.2 percent of the profit,” Haugen said. The problem is that these industries are so sensitive to growth that if they don’t grow at the level the market expects, their share price will crash. And so they are afraid to take even these small actions. Because they lower a company’s profitability a bit.’
On the day Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, he released a memo explaining that he bought the social media platform to promote the opportunity for dialogue, which he said was “lost.”
Musk felt that social media in its current state was “feeding and nurturing” “polarized extremes” with the “relentless” pursuit of clicks and views to generate more revenue.
Haugen says if Musk wants to turn the tide, he needs to lead the way on transparency — and that starts with sharing the ever-elusive algorithm.
Haugen says the more transparent tech companies are forced to be, the lower their share drops.
“Over the course of five years before Facebook’s disclosures went public, Facebook’s stock only fell more than 5 percent against the Nasdaq, about 25 times — 27 times,” she explained.
“Overwhelming were the events where the share price fell, when something came out that showed that Facebook should spend more money on security,” Haugen added.
Haugen began releasing large volumes of internal Facebook communications in September 2021 that explored how the company created exceptions for celebrity users, impacted young users, addressed vaccine misinformation, and responded to human trafficking and drug cartels on the platform.