NEW: I spoke to @RepLoriTrahan (D-MA3) about the WSJ report on Instagram's internal research on the relationship between use of its app and teen mental health. She has an urgent set of questions and concerns for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to address: techpolicy.press/rep-lori-traha…
"They have the research, they know the problems on their platforms and they have the ability to fix them and they’re simply choosing not to. And so my question for him is: why?" techpolicy.press/rep-lori-traha…
@RepLoriTrahan You can listen to the discussion here- I also include some highlights of Rep. Trahan's questions to Zuckerberg at a March hearing, and make a reference to @pkafka's interview of Instagram Adam Mosseri on his Recode podcast (which you should listen to): player.captivate.fm/episode/51ac93…
WSJ Facebook Files Part V: "Company documents show antivaccine activists undermined the CEO’s ambition to support the rollout by flooding the site and using Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine" @samschech@JeffHorwitz@EmilyGlazer wsj.com/articles/faceb…
@samschech@JeffHorwitz@EmilyGlazer "In the weeks before Mr. Zuckerberg made his announcement, another memo said initial testing concluded that roughly 41% of comments on English-language vaccine-related posts risked discouraging vaccinations." wsj.com/articles/faceb…
This confirms the contention of so many, such as @CCDHate's @Imi_Ahmed, who Facebook trashed for suggesting key influencers were warping the vaccine debate on the platform.
This week @AuthorPMBarrett, Grant Sims and I published a report on the relationship between social media, political polarization and its consequences. This report by @JeffHorwitz & @keachhagey does more than confirm our conclusions- it shows it is a crisis.wsj.com/articles/faceb…
It should not be lost to history that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was literally the dog-in-a-burning-house meme when he called his Chinese counterpart to reassure him after the insurrection:
"For the past three years, FB has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that IG is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls." wsj.com/articles/faceb…
"Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed."