10:30am ET Senate Commerce hearing will stream live here. Again, I still recommend rescheduling but so it goes. commerce.senate.gov
Live now. @SenBlumenthal pretty much just said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg committed perjury and has bipartisan support from leadership @MarshaBlackburn and @SenatorCantwell on both shoulders. /2
I had to hop off for 45min but this is going as expected. Members are doing a good job. A couple comments from me: 1) Facebook actually does know <13 users end up getting their data collected 2) There are plenty of lawsuits and testimony showing Mark Zuckerberg owns the decision
Now won't answer whether it's Mark Zuckerberg's call how long Instagram for Kids will be delayed. Facebook has testified as to organizational decision making in the past, "the buck stops with Mark," and there is a 400 page lawsuit making it clear.
This entire one minute exchange is telling and @MarshaBlackburn must be entirely disgusted that Facebook sent someone with answers like this.
Wow, she testified to this under oath with a straight face. @chrisinsilico would like to have a word with @MarshaBlackburn.
Note: Facebook loves to screw with denominators. When they do something good, they use the smallest denominator possible (eg % of hate speech they flag automatically) and the largest when something bad (eg % of suicidal consideration which traces back to Instagram).
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Because it’s going to get a lot worse. PR tip: 60 Minutes has a significantly larger audience (10mm+) than anything so far and will tease hearing. In addition, there are larger problems all coming at the same time. I’ll list them in no particular order:
For those who believe Facebook released the Instagram research last night on the eve of hearing, they did not. Here are the actual docs, thanks to WSJ:
(1 of 6) Teen Girls Body Image and Social Comparison on Instagram—An Exploratory Study in the US s.wsj.net/public/resourc…
Again, if I were Congress, I would postpone the hearing with Facebook this morning. For two reasons: 1) public isn’t seeing docs until this morning if at all and 2) will allow whistleblower to set the narrative not Facebook. On #1… 1/3
Facebook is a bad actor conducting information warfare on issues related to wellbeing of children. FB promised transparency - most of the slides came late last night due to WSJ reporters not FB. And industry experts will have valuable analysis once they see FB’s research. 2/3
Facebook dropped propaganda in single slide then their limited and annotated set of slides to set narrative. Whistleblower is on largest news show on - 60 Minutes - on Sunday night and testifying under oath next week. Let that be the first draft of history. Then FB responds. 3/3
Woah. So it looks like WSJ had six full decks on this one report about Instagram harms and they are incredibly impressive and thorough studies by Facebook’s own team. They deserve enormous attention - put them under the klieg lights please. /1
While it appears WSJ was incredibly diligent, contacted all mentioned execs for comment, redacted personal info etc, they clearly had the goods and their report sure seems to have fairly represented the research - again by internal Facebook experts. /2
I mean one deck is more than 70 slides of quality intelligence on Instagram being a problem. This is indeed Jeffrey Wigand - and 60 Minutes will be introducing the whistleblower to world ahead of her testimony to it all under oath. FB assured Congress it wouldn’t retaliate. /3
2:30pm ET today. District of Columbia vs Facebook which is deep in discovery on Cambridge Analytica cover-up and Facebook is resisting discovery, depositions of anything sensitive including sharing its privilege log
Judge reviewing the two motions. First up is DC's motion to compel Facebook to produce documents including designating additional custodians (DC is rightly wanting discovery on the Facebook Growth & Monetization team) as needed. She walks through the motion and opposition.
DC now arguing motion to compel. DC counsel begins argument back in 2010 reconfirming its understanding of case noting Cambridge Analytica, and the hiding of it in 2015-onward, as representative of the harms in design decisions with the platform to turn user data into profits.
Finally. Today at 10am we’ll hear testimony from NYU researchers ⬇️ who Facebook sent a cease and desist as they gathered microtargeting info on political ads then banned outright as they gathered January 6th incitement info. Zuckerberg got to speak first.
Facebook tried to position the decision as based on FTC consent order around privacy but the FTC dismissed that publicly in a rare open letter. And press were all over it appreciatively.
Here is a link to 10am hearing if you want to hear and share why Facebook shut down the researchers access. What’s Facebook hiding? The public deserves that they #DiscloseTheData. Helpful to share that hashtag and link. 🙏🏽 science.house.gov/hearings/the-d…