JUST IN: Ted Cruz Admonishes Facebook VP Over Reports Detailing Dangers To Teenagers From Platform

thank you madam chair mr satterfield my questions will be for you last week the wall street journal ran a damning article entitled facebook knows instagram is toxic for teen girls company documents show the tagline below it was quote its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental health issue that facebook plays down in public i know about this article because my wife heidi who reads the journal every day said you need to read this article now i read read it word for word all of us know that these products are addictive and that companies like facebook design them in this way in order to maximize addiction to capture eyeballs which captures data which is then used to sell advertising but for years facebook has been publicly insisting that its products aren't harmful in particular that they're not harming teenagers we now know that was a lie facebook knew that its products and specifically instagram was destroying the lives of far too many teenage girls facebook knew this because facebook conducted its own studies into how instagram affected young users and found that instagram is harmful to a sizable percentage of them in fact a slide from 2019 summarying the summarizing this research said quote we make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls another facebook slide said quote teens blame instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression another slide said quote teens who struggle with mental health say instagram makes it worse and most egregiously one presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts thirteen percent of british users and six percent of americans users traded traced their desire to kill themselves to instagram this should have made facebook stop dead in its tracks and ask what in the hell you were doing instead facebook publicly downplayed the risk to young users and committed to push to make sure more at-risk teenage girls used instagram because more users including more teenagers means more money whatever the human cost this is appalling the american people deserve a thorough investigation into facebook's willingness and eagerness to mislead the public about the risks of their own products the wall street journal article states that the research has been reviewed by top facebook executives and was cited in a presentation given to mark zuckerberg mr satterfield is this accurate did mark zuckerberg have personal knowledge of this facebook research senator i i don't know the answer to that question but you know to your other points i i would strongly disagree with the notion that our products are unsafe uh i strongly believe they are so let me ask you did you have knowledge of this research mr satterfield i'm sorry senator i i've read the wall street journal article did you have knowledge of it before the wall street journal article senator i i'm generally aware that we do research in our products are you familiar with this research i wasn't familiar with this research outside of the context of the journal article no so wait a second your title is vice president of privacy and public policy and you had no idea about facebook's own research showing that you're violating the privacy and destroying the lives of teenage girls you didn't know about it is that what you're testifying today senator we're a large company we have a lot of teams working on a lot of different issues i don't work on on these issues safety so you didn't know about it i i didn't other people did we're happy to and you have zero knowledge whether mark zuckerberg knew about it or not i i senator i don't know that um you knew you were coming to testify in this hearing i i'm going to guess you read the journal article before you showed up to testify senator i i came here to testify on data issues did you read the turtle article before you showed up to testify senator yes i've read the journal articles okay and presumably you prepared for today's testimony yes uh yes senator i prepared and did that preparation involve inquiring whether the wall street journal was accurate when it said mark zuckerberg was aware of this research senator i i can't get into the issues that we discussed during prep with with my lawyers why not you're here testifying on behalf of facebook i'm asking whether you inquired whether the journal was right that zuckerberg knew about this research did you inquire about it or did you remain willfully blind and not want to know if zuckerberg knew about it senator respectfully i'm here to testify about uh data and antitrust issues i i don't work on these issues i'm happy to put it again you're the vice president of privacy and public policy and and so putting in place policies that result in more teen suicides that does not fall within your purview senator i i don't agree with that characterization i i work on privacy let's take the specifics of facebook's research i read a quote a minute ago quote we make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls i didn't write that facebook wrote that is that an accurate statement senator we do this research in order to inform hard conversations i didn't ask why you did the research i asked if the statement that was the result of your research is true senator this is research that that was discussed in the journal this is research that we did internally was that a conclusion of your research yes or no senator i'm aware of the wall street journal article i've read the wall street journal article which discusses the research all right let's try another conclusion the facebook research concluded that 13 of british users and 6 percent of american users trace their desire to kill themselves to instagram is that a conclusion of your research senator cruz respectfully we have teams that work on these issues i i'm not on the respectfully you're not answering the question it's a simple binary question did your research conclude that or not if it's not show us the research that didn't conclude that if it is then the question is what's the culpability of a company that knows it is contributing to an expanding teen suicide so did your research conclude that six percent of american users trace their desire to kill themselves to instagram yes or no senator again these aren't issues that i work on at the company i'm happy to bring folks in for a briefing with you and your staff i i understand that you would prefer a briefing without the public being aware of it but i'm the father of two two girls including a teen teenage girl let me ask you something and your judgment in the judgment of facebook is increased teen suicide an acceptable business risk senator of course not has facebook quantified how many additional teenagers took their life because of your products senator again with respect these aren't the issues that i work on i came here today to talk about data and antitrust well let me ask you what would you say to the parent of a teenager who took her own life because of your products what would you say when two years ago you had research that you conducted that concluded your products would contribute to and expand teen suicide what would you say to a parent on behalf of facebook who was facing that horrific tragedy senator obviously losing a child to a tragedy like that is devastating i have children i take these issues incredibly seriously myself does facebook of course we do senator then what did you do differently you got this these results two years ago what conduct changed you don't get to say you take these issues seriously if you continue doing exactly the same and profiting off off of applications that are endangering the lives of teenage girls what did you do differently because of this research we did this research to inform our decision making we have consistently made uh did anything movements to the product did any questions issues like wellbeing i would love to have a team can anything change senator we've made changes to our products over the last did anything change to reduce the risk of teen suicide because of your product did you read this research and say oh my god this is horrifying let's change did you do anything to change or did you just say hey we're printing money so we're good with this which one was it senator i would love to have a team come and give you and your staff a full briefing on these issues we have made it's the american difficulty to safety and security i would love to share more about this with you with the folks who work on these things well the entire american people deserve to know the answers to these questions

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 123,306

Rating: 4.9510441 out of 5

Keywords: ted cruz, facebook, instagram, congress

Id: cK8mHiByn2g

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021