Ms Frances Haugen:

I will pose a question that is even closer to home. When I was visiting France, as part of my visit in the fall, almost every single governmental minister who I met in France - and I met a bunch - almost every single one asked the exact same question. They asked me whether I knew how many moderators speak French. They said they had been asking for years, but Facebook would not tell them. The reason Facebook will not tell them is because the number is so small that on certain pie charts. where they list all the money that is being spent on hate speech, there is no slice for French. This is an interesting question. The French authorities cannot get answers when they ask a basic question about many people Facebook has staffed to keep people who speak the French language safe. I think approximately 1 billion people in the world speak French. This is a major language. If the French authorities cannot get the answer to that question, or if they cannot ensure there are enough moderators, how is a small ethnic group on the other side of the world supposed to get a minimal level of safety?

I will give a concrete example of how Ireland could have stepped in. Ireland could have stepped in and said it was taking a leadership role to ensure a basic level of safety is ensured for platforms that exist in the country. It could have said that Facebook had to disclose how many people were supporting each language in each dialect, because then we could have had a conversation about it. If that had happened, it would have been disclosed that only one person in the company spoke Burmese. That was one of the things that came out of the UN report. You could also imagine a world where Ireland said it would start staffing a complaint hotline for people who work inside the company. In the United States, if I work at a hospital, there will be a sign up in my break room saying, "Did you see something that endangered patient health? Call this number."

When I worked in counter-espionage at Facebook, I was literally on the other side of state actors who were trying to weaponise the platform to hurt other nations. I did not know who in the government I could call for help. We know that content moderators are on the front line of basic safety for people. Someone might be getting stalked or threatened. Moderators are the first line of safety. Many of them are staffed out of Dublin. Imagine if Ireland had provided a phone number and said that if you believe someone is in danger, you can call this line and we will make sure someone at least listens to you. That could have been an avenue for the Facebook employee who was trying to raise the alarm about the Rohingya, but did not have a chain of command that they could escalate it up to. The UN found that this employee did not feel heard. Those are small, little things that Ireland could do. It could require minimal transparency, at least, and provide a helpline for people who see things that are problematic.