JAKARTA – A draft European Union regulation requiring technology companies to do more to tackle illegal online content could become the global gold standard for a safer online world if they are scaled up. This was stated by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to EU lawmakers on Monday, November 8.
Haugen, a former Facebook employee who worked as a product manager on the company's civil misinformation team, accused the social media giant of repeatedly prioritizing profit over suppressing hate speech and misinformation.
His testimony to the European Parliament Committee comes after stops in London, Lisbon and Berlin, and at a time when EU lawmakers are debating whether to strengthen the Digital Services Act (DSA) proposed by the EU's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager.
"The Digital Services Act now before Parliament has the potential to become a global gold standard," Haugen said.
“This can inspire other countries, myself included, to pursue new rules that will protect our democracy but the law must be strong and enforced firmly. Otherwise, we will miss this once-in-a-generation opportunity to align the future of technology and democracy," he told EU lawmakers.
Haugen said the DSA should be expanded to include online content that violates the platform's terms and conditions, and should force platforms to take responsibility for risks beyond the spread of illegal content such as election manipulation and disinformation about mental health hazards.
Haugen said news media content should not be exempt from the rules because disinformation campaigns can still play tricks on the system by leveraging the digital platforms used by publishers.
In a blog post ahead of the EU hearing, Facebook rejected Haugen's claim of prioritizing profit over user safety.
"Contrary to recent claims about our company, we have always had a commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our platform," Monika Bickert, Facebook's vice president of content policy, wrote on the blog.
He said Facebook will spend more than $5 billion this year on safety and security.
EU Industry chief Thierry Breton, who met Haugen earlier on Monday, criticized the tech company's increased lobbying over the draft rules and urged lawmakers contesting the DSA's scope to step up their deliberations.
"Speed is everything. We need the DSA/DMA package adopted in the first half of 2022," he said after the meeting.
The DMA, or Digital Markets Act, is another important piece of legislation that the EU is planning to stipulate what can and can't be done for global technology companies.
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