0 with no line-activation fees or term contract required. see if you can save by switching today. comcast business. powering possibilities. good morning. >> welcome to our viewers here in the u.s. and around the world. breaking news right now. critical pushback against the powers of social media today in a matter of minutes, facebook whistleblower will testify before a senate panel. she claim that is facebook is prioritizing profit over public good by knowingly peddling disinformation. in fact, hiding the results of its own internal studies. we're going to go live to the hearing once it begins. >> in prepared testimony, the whistleblower plans to say, quote, i believe what i did was right and necessary for the common good. but i know facebook has infinite resources which it could use to destroy me. as long as facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one and will continue to make choices that go against the common good. let's continue with our correspondents. good to have you with us. as we are waiting, we got that opening statement. she also, she talks about how what she saw at facebook was so different from her experience at other social media companies. that stands out, too. >> yeah, i think we got a reminder of that. today is all about power. the power of facebook. whe we saw how powerful it was with the outage. one company controls three of the world's biggest platforms. when one goes down, oftentimes they'll all go down, as we saw yesterday. but you're right, she said she has experience in other platforms and what she saw at facebook concerned her so much that she's now shortly going to be giving testimony in the room behind me. >> i'm going to quote from her opening stam. facebook, she says, became a $1 trillion company by paying for its praofits for its safety, including the safety of our children and that's unacceptable. this is not the first bout of bad pr for facebook here and yet the profit spigot keeps on spitting out money. and the disinformation continues to get shared. do you see this as a moment of change? >> every time there has been a facebook scandal, think about cambridge analytica, they try to lay low, down then come. most users come back although they have lost in some ways around the edges around younger users who might like instagram, but not facebook, but since instagram is owned by facebook, mark szuckerberg always wins. protecting kids online. this is about a vulnerable population that gets addicted to these products at a very early age. any parent knows that to be true and we're only just beginning as a society so reckon with the consequences. so that is why her testimony, her decision to come forward, by the way, one of tens of thousands of employees and she decided she had to quit and speak this truth. she could make a difference because it's about kids. >> we had that father on who placed some blame on instagram for his daughter's suicide. >> he talked about how his daughter didn't use social media a lot, but after her death, they recognized some of the places she was visiting and where it was pointing her towards, right? and when you talk about maybe kids aren't using facebook as much, but they are going to instagram. that's the concern. we both have teenagers and we see this. the concern is what it is being engineered to do and what it is feeding these kids in terms of body image issues. showing them that suicide is an answer as we heard from that father. >> when i interviewed a facebook exec executive over the weekend, he said this has always been a challenge for teenagers. for young women. fashion magazines being a difference. they're not as inl flurn. she has not the only one inside facebook with these fears. >> people do not check fashion magazines 27 times a day. this is the chairman. richard blumenthal. >> ranking member, senator blackburn, for your cooperation and collaboration. we've been working very closely. and the ranking member who is here, senator wicker, as well as our chairwoman, maria cantwell. senator cantwell i'm sure will be here shortly. most important, i'd like to thank our witness for being here and the two counsel who are representing her today and i want to give you my heartfelt gratitude for your courage and strength in coming forward as you have done standing up to one of the most powerful corporate giants in the history of the world without any exaggeration. you have a compelling, credible voice, which we've heard already, but you are not here alone. you're armed with documents and evidence. and you speak volumes as they do about how facebook has put profits ahead of people. among other revelations, the information you have provided to congress is powerful proof that facebook knew its products were harming teenagers. facebook exploited teens using powerful algorithms that amplified their insecurities and abuses through what it found was an addict's narrative. there is a question, which i hope you will diskucuss, as to whether there is such a thing as a safe algorithm. facebook saw teens creating secret accounts that are often hidden from their parents. as unique value proposition. in their words, a unique valued proposition. a way to drive up numbers for advertisers and shareholders at the expense of safety. and it doubled down on targeting children, pushing products on preteens, not just teens, but preteens. that it knows are harmful to our kids' mental health and well-being. instead of telling parents, facebook concealed the facts. it sought to stone wall and block this information from becoming public, including to this committee when senator blackburn and i specifically asked the company. and still, even now, as of just last thursday when a facebook witness came for this committee, it has refused disclosure or even when it might decide to disclose additional codocuments. they've continued their tactics even after they knew the d destruction they caused. they continued to profit from them. their profit was more important than the pain that they caused. last thursday, a message from miss antigone davis was simple. quote, this research is not a bombshell, end quote. and she repeated the line. not a bombshell. well, this research is the very definition of a bombshell. facebook and big tech are facing a big tobacco moment. a moment of reckoning. parallel is striking. i sued big tobacco as connecticut's attorney general. i helped to lead the states in that and i remember very, very well the moment in the course of our litigation when we learned of those files that showed not only that big tobacco knew that its product caused cancer, but that they had done the research, they concealed the files, and now we knew and the world knew and big tech now faces that big tobacco, jaw dropping moment of truth. it is documented proof that facebook knows its products can be addictive and toxic to children and it's not just that they made money. f again, it's that they valued their profit more than the pain that they caused to children and their families. the damage to self-interest and self-worth inflected by facebook today will haunt a generation. feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, self-hatred will impact this generation for years to come. our children are the ones who are victims. teens today looking at themselves in the mirror feel doubt and insecurity. mark zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror today and yet rather than taking responsibility, and showing leadership, mr. zuckerberg is going sailing. his new moe tuss on prende, no action, nothing to see here. mark zuckerberg, you need to come before this committee. you need to explain to frances, to us, to the world, and to the parents of america what you were doing and why you did it. instagram's business model is pretty straightforward. more eyeballs, more dollars. everything facebook does is to add more users and keep them on their apps for longer. in order to hook us, instagram uses our private information to precisely target us with content and recommendations, assessing that what will provoke a reaction will keep us scrolling. far too often, these reco recommendations are destructive behaviors. as we showed on thursday, we created a fake account. my office and i did, as a teen interested in extreme dieting and eating disorders. instagram latched on to that teenager's initial insecurities and then pushed more content and recommendations. f glorifying eating disorders. that's how instagram's algorithms can push teens into darker and darker places. facebook's own researchers called it instagram's quote, perfect storm. exacerbating downward spirals. facebook, as you have put it so powerfully, maximizes profits and ignores pain. facebook's failure to acknowledge and to act makes it morally bankrupt. again and again, facebook rejected reforms recommended by its own researchers. last week, miss davis said quote, we're looking at, end quote, no specific plans, no commitments, only vague platitudes. these documents that you have revealed provided this company with a blueprint, provide specific recommendation that could have made facebook and instagram say for the company repeatedly ignored those recommendations from its own researchers that would have made facebook and instagram safer. facebook researchers have suggested changing their recommendations to stop promoting accounts known to encourage dangerous body comparison. instead of making meaningful changes, facebook simply pays lip service and if they won't act, and if big tech won't act, congress has to intervene. privacy protection is long overdue. senator markey and i have introduced the kids act, which would been addictive tactics that facebook uses to exploit children. parents deserve better tools to protect their children. i'm also a firm supporter of reforming section 230. we should consider narrowing this sweeping immunity when platform's algorithms amplify illegal conduct. perhaps you'll expand on it. we've heard compelling recommendations about requiring disclosures of research and independent reviews of these platform's algorithms and i plan to pursue these ideas. the securities and exchange commission should investigate your intentions and claims. and so should the federal trade commission. facebook appears to have misled the public and investors an if that's correct, it ought to face real penalties as a result of that misleading and deceptive misrepresentation. i want to thank all my colleagues who are here today because what we have is a bipartisan congressional roadmap for reform that will safeguard and protect children from big tech. that will be a focus of our subcommittee moving forward and it will continue to be bipartisan and finally, i'll just end on this note. >> in the path weeks and days, parents have contacted me with their heartbreaking and spine chilling stories about children pushed into eating disorders, bullying online, self-injury of the most disturbing kind and sometimes even taking their lives because of social media. parents are holding facebook accountable because of your bravery. and we need to hold accountable facebook and all big tech as well. again, my thanks to you. i am going to enter into the record a letter from 52 state attorneys general and from two members of the youth advisory board of sandy hook promise, as long as there's no objection and now i'll turn to the ranking member. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for entering that letter in the record that we have from our states attorneys general. good morning to everyone. it is nice to see people in this hearing room and to be here for the hearing today. we thank you for your appearance before us today and for giving the opportunity not only for congress, but for the american people to hear from you in this setting and we appreciate that. mr. chairman, i think, also thanks to you and your staff to make certain that we have this hearing and this opportunity today so that we can get more insight into what facebook is actually doing as they innovate the privacy, not only of adults, but of children and look at the ways that they are this violation of the children's online privacy protection act, which is federal law. and looking at how they are evading that law and working around it. and as the chairman said, privacy and online privacy, passing a federal privacy standard has been long in the works. i filed my first privacy bill when it was in the house back in 2012 and i think it will be this congress and subcommittee that has that is going to lead the way to data security, section 230 reforms and of course senator klobuchar always wants to talk about antitrust and i have to give a nod. senator markey is down there, when we were in the house, we were probably two of the only ones who were talking about the need to have a federal privacy standard. now as the chairman mentioned, last week, we heard from miss davis, who had global safety for facebook. it was surprises to us that she tried to minimize the information in these documents. to minimize the research. and to minimize the knowledge that facebook had. at one point, i even reminded her the research was not third party research. the research was their, facebook's, internal research. so they knew what they were doing. they knew where the violations were and they know they are guilty. their research tells them this. last week in advance of our hearing, facebook released two studies and said that "the wall street journal" was all wrong. they had just gotten it wrong. as if "the wall street journal" did not know how to read these documents and how to work through this research. having seen the data that you've presented and the other studies that facebook did not publicly share, i feel pretty confident that it's facebook who has done the misrepresenting to this committee. here are some of the numbers that facebook chose not to chair and mr. chairman, i think it's important that we look at these as we talk about the setting for this hearing. what we learned last week, what you and i have been learning over the past three years about big tech and facebook. and here you go. 66% of teen girls on instagram and 40% of teen boys experience negative social comparisons. this is facebook's research. 52% of teen girls who experience negative social comparison on instagram said it was caused by images related to beauty. social comparison is worse on instagram because it is perceived as real life, but based on celebrity standards. social comparison mimics the grief cycle and includes a downward emotional spiral encompassing the range of emotions from jealousy to self-proclaimed body dismorphia. which facebook called problematic use. is most severe in teens piquing at age 14. facebook is not interested in making significant changes to improve kids' safety on their platforms. at least not when that would result in losing eyeballs on posts or decreasing their administrative revenues. in fact, facebook is running scared as they know that in their own words, young adults are less active and less engaged on facebook and that they are running out of teens to add to instagram. so teens are looking at other platforms like tiktok and facebook is only making those changes that add to its user's numbers and ultimately its profits. follow the money. so what are these changes? allowing users to create multiple accounts that facebook does not delete and encouraging teens to create second accounts they can hide from their parents. they are also studying younger and younger children, as young as 8, so that they can market to them. and while miss davis says that kids below 13 are not allowed on facebook or instagram, we know that they are because she told us that they recently had deleted 600,000 accounts from children under age 13. so how do you get that many underage accounts if you aren't turning a blind eye to them in the first place? then in order to try to clean it up, you go to delete it then you say oh, by the way, we just in the last month, deleted 600,000 under age accounts. and speaking of turning a blind eye, facebook turns a blind eye to user privacy. news broke yesterday that the private data of over 1.5 billion, that's right, 1.5 billion facebook users is being sold on a hacking forum. that's its biggest data breach to date. examples like this underscore my strong concerns about facebook collecting the data of kids and teens teens and what they are doing with it. facebook also turns a blind eye toward blatant human exploitation, taking place on its platform, trafficking, forced labor, cartels. the worst possible things one can imagine. big tech companies have gotten away with abusing consumers for too long. it is clear that facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of children and all users. so as a mother and a grandmother, this is an issue that is of particular concern to me. so we thank you for being here today, miss haugen, and we look forward to getting to the truth about what facebook is doing with users dayta and with how they are abusing their privacy and how they show a lack of respect for the individuals that are on their network. we look forward to the testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thanks, senator blackburn. i don't know whether ranking member would like to make a -- >> if you don't mind. thank you, chairman blumenthal and i will just take a moment or two. and i do appreciate being able to speak as ranking member of the full committee. this, miss haugen, this is a subcommittee hearing. you see some vacant seats. this is pretty good attendance for a subcommittee. there are also a lot of things going on so people will be coming and going, but i'm willing to predict this will have almost 100% attendance. by members of the subcommittee because of the importance of this subject matter, so thanks for coming forward to share concerns about facebook's business practices. particularly with respect to children and teens and of course that is the main topic of our, the title of our hearing today. protecting kids online. the recent revelations about facebook's effects on children and its plan to target younger audiences are indeed disturbing and i think you're going to see a lot of bipartisan concern about this today and in future hearings. they just, they show how urgent it is for congress to act against powerful tech companies on behalf of children and the broader public. and i say powerful tech companies, they are possessive of immense, immense power. their product is addictive and people on both sides of this dias are concerned about this. talked to an opinionmaker just down the hall a few moments before the hearing. this person said the tech gods have been demystified now. and i think this hearing today, mr. chair, is part of the process of demystifying big tech. the children of america are hooked on their product. it is often destructive and harmful and there's a cynical knowledge on behalf of the leadership of these big tech companies that that is true. miss haugen, i hope you will have a chance to talk about your work experience at facebook and perhaps compare it to other social media companies. i also look forward to hearing your thoughts on how this committee and how this congress can ensure greater accountability and transparency, especially with regard to children. so thank you, mr. chairman and thank you, miss haugen, for being here today. >> our witness this morning is frances haugen. she she was the lead project information on the civic information team. she holds a degree from owen college and mba from harvard. she made the courageous decision, as all of us here and many others around the world know, to leave facebook and reveal the terrible truths about the company she learned during her tenure there. i think we are all in agreement here in expressing our gratitude and our admiration for your bravery in coming forward. thank you, miss haugen. plead proceed. >> good