Ms Frances Haugen:

If we talk about chronological news feeds, Facebook is going to come out and say that it has run an experiment and that a chronological news feed has more bad content. I want the committee to hold Facebook to account. Facebook has forced us into lots of large toxic groups. We talked before about the idea that 65% of the people who joined neo-Nazi groups joined them because Facebook recommended those groups to them. At this point, Facebook cannot just change the algorithm; it has to come in and change other things about how the groups product is designed. It has to do these changes simultaneously or, as Facebook says, we will just get more inflammatory content.

However, if Facebook had to report more safety factors in an ongoing way - a weekly update as opposed to a yearly one - or if the public were allowed to request those data, Facebook would suddenly have to take things out of its filing cabinet. It has all of these solutions, for example, cutting the reshare chain at two or requiring people to click on a link. These solutions exist today but Facebook chooses not to use them because of the profit motive.

Part of why it is important to put these regulations in place is because the choices Facebook is making right now will limit its long-term profitability.