But other Facebook officials only spend hours baked by Congress members about company policy, and whether it is enough to protect some of the most vulnerable users. And once again, Facebook’s executive – today is the head of Davis’s safety antigon – it seems to do our best to avoid the most difficult questions.
But the latest hearing on mental health of teenagers, who come in response to reporting from WSJ, is different from past hearings. That’s because, thanks to the reporter, members of the Senate Trade Committee now have access to thousands of internal documents written by the company’s own researchers.
These documents, some of them have been published, painted a very different picture of understanding Facebook and Instagram about how their services affect adolescent mental health than what they publish publicly. These documents are in the hands of parliamentarians, make findings that are far more difficult for Facebook to spin. Disclosures have forced Facebook to “pause” to work on Instagram children’s applications.
“We now have deep insight about Facebook nonstop campaigns to recruit and exploit young users,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal at the beginning of the trial. “We now know, while Facebook openly denies that Instagram is very dangerous for teenagers, personally, Facebook, researchers and experts have sounded alarm for years.”
It has forced Facebook to an uncomfortable position in trying to underestimate the significance of its own research. “This is not a bomb research,” Davis repeated several times during hearing. One day before, Facebook released a diverse version of two diverse documents, with a note that also tried to explain its own findings. The documents, which are only two of the “thousands” Blumenthal said he now has access to, used words such as “mieli” and “sensational” to try to minimize findings like the fact that Instagram makes “the body image worse for 1 in 3 teenage girls. “
The tactic did not go well in the senate on Thursday. “This research is a bomb,” Blumenthal said. “It’s strong, gripping, stunning evidence that Facebook knows the harmful effects of their sites in children, and that it has hidden the facts and findings.”
Like the past hearing, there are some cringey moments. At one point, Blumenthal demands to find out whether Facebook will be “committed to ending Fintha” – reference to a secondary account that is often used by teenagers to stay anonymously. It forces Davis to awkwardly explain that what is called “FINSTAS” is not an official Instagram feature. At another point, Senator Ted Cruz demanded Davis explain why he did not appear at the trial directly (he quoted the Covid-19 protocol).