The story of how a B.C. man found his birth mother
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
Amid fallout from the Facebook Papers documents supporting claims that the social network has valued financial success over user safety, Facebook on Monday reported higher profit for the latest quarter.
The company's latest show of financial strength followed an avalanche of reports on the Facebook Papers -- a vast trove of redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press -- as well as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's Monday testimony to British lawmakers.
Facebook said its net income grew 17% in the July-September period to $9.19 billion, buoyed by strong advertising revenue. That's up from $7.85 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 35% to $29.01 billion. The results exceeded analyst expectations for Facebook's results.
The company's shares rose 2.5% in after-hours trading after closing up 1% for the day.
"For now, the revenue picture for Facebook looks as good as can be expected," said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she predicted more revelations and described the findings so far as "unsettling and stomach-churning."
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made only a brief mention of what he called the "recent debate around our company." Largely repeating statements he made after Haugen's Oct. 5 testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, he insisted that he welcomes "good faith criticism" but considers the current storm a "coordinated effort" by news organizations to criticize the company based on leaked documents.
Haugen, meanwhile, told a British parliamentary committee Monday that the social media giant stokes online hate and extremism, fails to protect children from harmful content and lacks any incentive to fix the problems, providing momentum for efforts by European governments working on stricter regulation of tech companies.
While her testimony echoed much of what she told the U.S. Senate this month, her in-person appearance drew intense interest from a British parliamentary committee that is much further along in drawing up legislation to rein in the power of social media companies.
Haugen told the committee of United Kingdom lawmakers that Facebook Groups amplifies online hate, saying algorithms that prioritize engagement take people with mainstream interests and push them to the extremes. The former Facebook data scientist said the company could add moderators to prevent groups over a certain size from being used to spread extremist views.
"Unquestionably, it's making hate worse," she said.
Haugen said she was "shocked to hear recently that Facebook wants to double down on the metaverse and that they're gonna hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse," Haugen said, referring to the company's plans for an immersive online world it believes will be the next big internet trend.
"I was like, `Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?"' she said.
Facebook says it wants regulation for tech companies and was glad the U.K. was leading the way.
"While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we agree we need regulation for the whole industry so that businesses like ours aren't making these decisions on our own," Facebook said Monday.
It pointed to investing $13 billion (9.4 billion pounds) on safety and security since 2016 and asserted that it's "almost halved" the amount of hate speech over the last three quarters.
Haugen accused Facebook-owned Instagram of failing to keep children under 13 -- the minimum user age -- from opening accounts, saying it wasn't doing enough to protect kids from content that, for example, makes them feel bad about their bodies.
"Facebook's own research describes it as an addict's narrative. Kids say, `This makes me unhappy, I feel like I don't have the ability to control my usage of it, and I feel like if I left, I'd be ostracized,`" she said.
The company last month delayed plans for a kids' version of Instagram, geared toward those under 13, to address concerns about the vulnerability of younger users. Haugen said she worried it may not be possible to make Instagram safe for a 14-year-old and that "I sincerely doubt it's possible to make it safe for a 10-year-old."
She also said Facebook's moderation systems are worse at catching content in languages other than English, and that's a problem even in the U.K. because it's a diverse country.
"Those people are also living in the U.K. and being fed misinformation that is dangerous, that radicalizes people," Haugen said. "And so language-based coverage is not just a good-for-individuals thing, it's a national security issue."
Pressed on whether she believes Facebook is fundamentally evil, Haugen demurred and said, "I can't see into the hearts of men." Facebook is not evil, but negligent, she suggested.
"It believes in a world of flatness, and it won't accept the consequences of its actions," pointing to its mammoth one-level, open-plan corporate office as an embodiment of the philosophy.
It was Haugen's second appearance before lawmakers after she testified in the U.S. about the danger she says the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence and fueling misinformation. Haugen cited internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in Facebook's civic integrity unit.
The documents, which Haugen provided to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, allege Facebook prioritized profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public. Some stories based on the files have already been published, exposing internal turmoil after Facebook was blindsided by the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and how it dithered over curbing divisive content in India. More is to come.
Representatives from Facebook and other social media companies plan to speak to the British committee Thursday.
U.K. lawmakers are drafting an online safety bill calling for setting up a regulator that would hold companies to account when it comes to removing harmful or illegal content from their platforms, such as terrorist material or child sex abuse images.
Haugen is scheduled to meet next month with European Union officials in Brussels, where the bloc's executive commission is updating its digital rulebook to better protect internet users by holding online companies more responsible for illegal or dangerous content.
Under the U.K. rules, expected to take effect next year, Silicon Valley giants face an ultimate penalty of up to 10% of their global revenue for any violations. The EU is proposing a similar penalty.
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Associated Press writer Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
A Montreal man is warning Tesla drivers about using the Smart Summon feature after his vehicle hit another in a parking lot.
Italy's mafia rarely dirties its hands with blood these days. Extortion rackets have gone out of fashion and murders are largely frowned upon by the godfathers.
The Israel-Hamas war has led to a spike in 'violent rhetoric' from 'extremist actors' that could prompt some in Canada to turn to violence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns.
Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine and Moscow warned that tensions with the West are deepening.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Actor Bernard Hill, who delivered a rousing cry before leading his people into battle in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' and went down with the ship as the captain in 'Titanic,' has died.
Police say it’s fortunate no one was injured or killed in a collision at North Vancouver’s Park and Tilford shopping centre Saturday evening that sent one vehicle careening into a flower shop and another into a set of concrete barriers outside a Winners store.
The Israeli army on Monday ordered tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza's southern city of Rafah to start evacuating from the area, signalling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.