MP calls for Facebook to be punished if it withholds evidence of harm to users | Facebook social networking site

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Facebook should be punished with hefty fines, potentially amounting to billions of pounds, if it withholds evidence that its social media platforms are harming users, according to the parliamentarian who is leading a new online safety bill.

The social network is under political pressure on both sides of the Atlantic after the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook knows the photo-sharing app to Instagram is harming the mental health of teenage girls. The leaked internal documents showed that among teenagers with suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced a suicidal ideation to Instagram.

Damian Collins, the Conservative chair of the Joint Committee on the Internet Security Bill, which imposes a duty of care on social media companies to protect users from harmful content, said on Wednesday: “If they have important information like this and keep that information from the regulator I think they should. Punish them. There will be fines. The bill creates a duty of care. If damages occur and the company tries to hide that information from the regulator, it would be a serious breach of the duty of care.”

Under the bill, social media companies are required to submit to Ofcom, the communications watchdog, a “risk assessment” of content that causes harm to users.

The bill proposes fines of up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover, which in the case of Facebook would be around £6 billion. A Facebook research segment from 2019, revealed by the WSJ, reported that the app made body image problems worse for one in three girls.

Biban Qadron, a fellow board member and committee member who was behind the recent introduction of the Children’s Privacy Act, said the revelations demonstrated “beyond any doubt the importance and timing of the bill for online safety.” She added: “It is unequivocal that the protections of the law should extend to protecting children wherever they are online, whether on social media, in app stores or in virtual classrooms. Facebook’s own research shows how children are sent into a downward spiral of harmful experiences through Features deliberately designed to keep them engaged. The bill should bring about an era of minimum enforceable standards. What we have now is that the tech industry limits its homework and then hides the devastating consequences.”

Children’s charity NSPCC said it was “appalling” that Facebook had not acted on its own internal evidence that Instagram had caused harm to its users.

Andy Burroughs, NSPCC’s Head of Children’s Online Safety Policy, said: “Instead of working to make the site safe, they have hobbled researchers, regulators, and governments and ran a public relations and lobbying campaign to try to prove the opposite.”

In Washington, the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee said it would investigate what was disclosed and was in contact with a whistleblower on Facebook.

“It is clear that Facebook is unable to hold itself accountable,” said US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, chair and senior member of the committee, respectively. “When we had the opportunity to express their knowledge of Instagram’s impact on young users, Facebook provided evasive answers that were misleading and covered clear evidence of significant harm.”

“While the story focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light, we endorse this research,” Karina Newton, head of public policy at Instagram, said in a blog post on Tuesday. “It demonstrates our commitment to understanding the complex and challenging issues that young people may face, and guides all work What we’re doing to help those with these issues.”

The uproar around Instagram came when the Wall Street Journal published more information about Facebook and how changing its News Feed algorithm in 2018 made the platform’s users angrier and more divisive. “Disinformation, toxicity, and violent content are excessively prevalent among re-shares,” Facebook researchers said in the internal memos. According to the Wall Street Journal, political parties in Europe have warned Facebook that it is becoming more passive in its campaign to stay on users’ news feed. “Many parties, including those that have turned negative, worry about the long-term effects on democracy,” said an internal Facebook report.

In response to the latest revelations, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Does ranking change the source of the world’s divisions? No, research shows that some partisan divisions in our society have grown for many decades, long before platforms like Facebook even existed.”

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