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Mark Zuckerberg (2019)
Photo: Mark Lennihan / AP
It was a highly anticipated meeting before the US Congress: And in the end it was a roughly three-hour accounting of the whistleblower Frances Haugen with the business practices of Facebook.
Now company boss Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out and rejected the allegations of the former employee.
The focus was on Haugen's statement that the world's largest social network stirs up the anger of its users out of addiction to profit.
"The argument that we intentionally promote content to make people angry for money is deeply illogical," wrote Zuckerberg on Tuesday on his Internet platform.
"We make money with ads and advertisers keep telling us that they don't want to see their ads next to harmful or angry content." He doesn't know of any tech company that makes products that make people angry or depressed.
According to Haugen, products harm children
Previously, the former Facebook manager Haugen had said before the congress that Facebook deliberately polarized and harmed the mental health of children.
MPs from both parties criticized the US group at the hearing.
"I believe that Facebook's products harm children, fuel divisions and weaken our democracy," the 37-year-old told the committee.
"Congress has to act." The Facebook executives would not solve this crisis without help from politics.
The former product manager continues: »The company management knows how Facebook and Instagram can be made more secure.
But it does not make the necessary changes because it has put its astronomical profits above people. "
The group is plagued by new problems
Haugen drew parallels with the cigarette industry: "When we found out that the tobacco industry was concealing the damage it caused, the government acted."
Facebook has firmly denied the allegations.
However, the company has come under massive pressure from the revelations.
There have been calls for stricter regulation of online platforms for years.
The Facebook group recently struggled with a number of problems: The services Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were affected by a breakdown lasting several hours on Monday - billions of accounts could not be accessed.
Facebook blamed a faulty reconfiguration of routers for the total failure of the platforms and apologized to the users.
jok / Reuters
