Facebook crisis Congressional accountability, Russia threatens to fine the company, and Europe is looking for alternatives

Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies during a hearing entitled 'Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower' in Washington

Frances Haugen said that Facebook products harm democracy and children

Former Facebook official Frances Haugen said that Facebook focuses on making profits, which sometimes leads to harm to people, and that the company hides things that may lead to harm, and operates in the shadows and against the public interest, while the company said that "we do not agree with its description of many One of the issues she testified about.

Haugen added - during a hearing before the US Senate Committee on Consumer Protection and Data Security - that Facebook products harm democracy and children, and confirmed that the company knows that there are accounts for children under the age of 13 on its site, and it reaps huge profits from advertisements in which children are used.

Members of the Committee on Consumer Protection and Data Security called Facebook's plans to target children and youth "frightening" and noted bipartisan concerns about Facebook's influence.

Haugen had said that internal research conducted by Facebook showed that dealing with Instagram content caused depression in teenage girls, considering that the platform's content harms teenagers.

Also in Washington, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed the administration's concern about the growing power of social media and its self-management system.

Psaki added that the information revealed by former Facebook official Francis Haugen showed the ineffectiveness of self-regulation adopted by social media platforms.

Saki pointed out that the efforts made by these companies to attract users, and their negative impact on the mental health of adolescents, is certainly troubling.

For years, US lawmakers have threatened to create regulatory frameworks for Facebook and other social networks to counter criticism that tech giants are ignoring privacy issues, providing ideal platforms for spreading misinformation and harming the well-being of young people.

Facebook reply

On the other hand, Facebook objected to what was stated in the hearing with the resigned employee of the company, Frances Haugen, and the leak of internal documents.

Andy Stone, a member of the company's communications department, published a statement by the department chair, saying, "Today, the Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked at the company for less than two years."

"We don't agree with her characterization of many of the issues she has testified about. Despite all this, we do agree on one thing: it's time to start setting standards for the Internet."

"It's been 25 years since the Internet's rules were updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions for lawmakers, it's time for Congress to take action."

And this evening, Facebook said its outage of more than six hours on Monday was caused by a system that controls the "capacity of its global backbone."

The company added in a blog that its software auditing tool had a glitch, which prevented it from stopping the order that caused the outage, Reuters reported.

Allegations and investigation

In an opening speech at a meeting of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday; The committee chair, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D),

said that Facebook knows that its products are as addictive as cigarettes.

He added that "the technology company is now facing an amazing moment of truth," demanding that the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg appear to testify before the commission, and also called on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the social media company.

"Our children are the victims," ​​Blumenthal continued. "The teenagers who look at themselves in the mirror today are feeling suspicious and insecure, and Mark Zuckerberg should look at himself in the mirror," adding that Zuckerberg is out for a picnic instead.

In an era when bipartisanship is scarce, Democrats and Republicans agreed on the need for major changes in Facebook, and the top Republican on the committee, Marsha Blackburn, said that Facebook is turning a blind eye to children under the age of 13 on its sites, and added, "It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profits rather than profits. The well-being of children and all users.

Facebook spokesman Kevin McAllister said - in an email before the committee meeting - that the company believes that protecting its community (ie users) is more important than maximizing profits, and added that it is not accurate that leaked internal research has proven that Instagram is toxic to teenage girls.

Need to move

Aj news correspondent Bisan Abu Kweik said that the most important thing that was monitored during the day was the unprecedented consensus between Republicans and Democrats regarding their dissatisfaction and criticism of Facebook. She added that there was consensus that action should be taken against what they said was harm caused to teenagers and children by Facebook.

Aj news correspondent Wajd Waqvi said that the White House and US President Joe Biden were very concerned about Facebook even before Biden became president.

She added that Biden was saying that if he became president, he would encourage Congress to repeal Section 230 of the US communications laws (protecting technology companies), an article that gives all freedom to Facebook to expand and acquire other companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

She added that the other problem with the White House is the information and political disinformation and the encouragement of violence by such websites.

Russian threat

In Russia, Moscow threatened Facebook today, Tuesday, with a fine that could exceed hundreds of millions of euros for failing to withdraw content that Moscow classifies as illegal, in a new episode of Russia's campaign against the Internet giants.

The Russian Communications Authority said - in a statement - that this amount may reach "between 5 and 10 percent of the annual trading volume" of the American company in Russia, according to what was reported by Agence France-Presse.

This percentage may be equivalent to tens of billions of rubles (several hundreds of millions of dollars), according to the Russian economic newspaper "Vedomosti".

Russia regularly sanctions large digital companies for failing to remove content that promotes drugs or suicide or is linked to dissent.

Earlier, Russian officials said that the disruption of Facebook highlights Russia's right to develop its platforms and sovereign social networks on the Internet, while the European Union stressed that this outage shows the need for more competing companies.

Russian social networks reported an increase in activity during the worldwide outage of Facebook on Monday.

For years, Russia has asserted greater dominance over its internet sector, pressured foreign tech companies to remove content and store data in Russia, and improved its ability to block platforms that break its rules.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said - during a Facebook outage that lasted about 6 hours on Monday evening - that what is happening "answers the question of whether we need our social networks and Internet platforms?"

VKontakta (VK), the largest home-grown Russian social network, had significantly more Facebook users in the country on Monday, and also announced an increase in messages and users during the Facebook shutdown.

Facebook attributed the malfunction that prevented its 3.5 billion users from accessing its services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to an error in changing the settings.

The down detector, which tracks internet outages, described the failure as the biggest glitch ever faced by Facebook.

A large number of users switched to competing applications such as Twitter and Tik Tok on Monday.

A number of Facebook employees - who asked not to be named - told Reuters they believed the malfunction was caused by an internal error in how Internet traffic was routed to the company's systems.

Other alternatives

Meanwhile, European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday that Facebook's 6-hour outage yesterday shows the consequences of relying on a small number of large companies, and underscores the need for more competition.

Vestager wrote on Twitter that the incident showed the need for more competition.

Vestager last year proposed draft rules known as the Digital Markets Act, which set out a list of do's and don'ts for Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to force them to change their core business model to allow more competition.