MONDAY may have been a bad day for Mark Zuckerberg. For six hours, his money-making machines — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — suffered a huge global outage. But Tuesday was worse.
On that day, Facebook's former data scientist Frances Haugen was on Capitol Hill to tell the Senate Commerce Committee how the social media platform knowingly harms the world. Haugen isn't the first to testify against Facebook and she won't be the last.
But the difference this time is that the senators are joining Haugen to denounce Zuckerberg for putting "astronomical profit before people". Who wouldn't if Facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken democracy, to use Haugen's opening words to the senate committee.
For sure Capitol Hill will not delete Facebook, but it will certainly call for a facelift. To be fair to Haugen, she was not asking for the deletion of Facebook either. All she wants the lawmakers to do is to change the rules by which Facebook plays the social media game.
The moment of truth may have finally arrived for Zuckerberg and his misbehaving platforms, especially Facebook. But Zuckerberg was his usual defensive self in his blog post after the hearing ended. "We care deeply about issues like safety, wellbeing and mental health.
It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognise the false picture of the company that is being painted." But the fact is Zuckerberg has said sorry many times before. Not to mention the number of "lessons learned".
Facebook has been up to mischief for some time now. On Nov 5 2018, Facebook was forced to admit that it had not done enough to stop people from using the platform to foment violence in Myanmar against the Rohingya, arguably the most persecuted people in the world after the Palestinians.
And that, too, only after a report by Business for Social Responsibility pointing an accusing finger at Facebook made it to the media. "We agree that we can and should do more." But did Facebook do more? If Haugen's testimony to Congress is anything to go by, the platform has not done enough to stop Facebook from being a deadly weapon against ethnic minorities.
On Tuesday, it stood accused of doing the same in Ethiopia where a civil war is raging in the province of Tigray. Yesterday, The Guardian, a British daily, quoted authorities in Nigeria as saying that "fake news spread on Facebook is killing people, as groups attack each other in retaliation for atrocities that never happened".
What this tells us about Facebook is that it will not give up its errant ways without being compelled to. No matter how many congressional hearings. Facebook is used to giving pledges after every such hearing. It will do the same now.
Like before, nothing will be fixed. By now, Congress should know what to fix. Haugen has given the Senate Commerce Committee some ideas on how Congress can tame Facebook. At the very minimum, Congress must enable the regulators to look under the hood of Facebook to discover its ugly truth.
Too many people have taken great risks to their person to tell Congress the harm the platform is causing not only to Americans, but to vulnerable people the world over. If Congress fails to act yet again, then it will stand on the wrong side of history
