According to reports, Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen (Frances Haugen) said that if Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter into a public square, it should open source its algorithm.
Elon Musk has previously discussed making Twitter a digital town square “for discussion of things that are critical to the future of humanity.
Haugen was talking about the issue in a media interview last Monday. “One of the most important things for Elon Musk to do to prove he wants to create a public square is to release algorithms,” she said.
“Open source algorithms.” She added, “He’ll get more help — costs will be lower and profits will be higher.”
Elon Musk has previously stated that the key reason for the Twitter acquisition was to “give power to the people. He also said in a memo after completing the $44 billion deal that he bought Twitter to facilitate a conversation that had disappeared.
Elon Musk also wanted Twitter to become “the most accurate source of information in the world. But he scaled back his content review team just weeks after the acquisition was completed.
Haugen, who was a product manager on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team, publicly disclosed a trove of internal Facebook documents in 2021 that showed the company’s many decisions — decisions that she told the U.S. Congress had caused “more division, harm, lies, threats and struggle. “
Haugen also said in the interview that U.S. social media companies generally oppose government involvement because it would lead to at least a 20 percent shrinkage in profits.
“Facebook is scared.” She said, “If we really had transparency and really had accountability mechanisms, their margins wouldn’t be 35 percent, they’d be down to 15 percent.”
More problems were later revealed in the media, including that Instagram had exacerbated teenage body image concerns, that Facebook saw children as an untapped market and that the company had a secret system that allowed 5.8 million users, including politicians and celebrities, to bypass its content rules.
Haugen has previously said that Facebook is unlikely to recover unless Mark Zuckerberg steps down as CEO.
Neither Facebook’s parent company Meta nor Twitter has commented.
