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Whistleblowers are individuals who come forward to disclose critical information about wrongdoings and frauds. It was in 1863 that Abraham Lincoln enacted the False Claims Act. Under this Act, whistleblowers may receive rewards for exposing wrongdoings in the form of a percentage of the total sum recovered through their efforts. In 2006, a new whistleblower law was enacted to enable individuals to expose tax frauds including underpayments and other violations of the internal revenue law. The False Claims Act applies to whistleblowers reporting on the illicit use of federal funds in areas like Medicare fraud, government contractor fraud and environmental fraud. Here is a timeline of the most influential whistleblowers in US history.

1777 - Samuel Shaw and Richard Marven

America's first whistleblowers. In 1777, shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, naval officers Samuel Shaw and Richard Marven, part of a small group of men who had witnessed their commanding officer torture British prisoners of war, reported their leader for his actions.

But, in common with modern whistleblowers, for reporting the misconduct of the Navy's highest officer, Shaw and Marven were both dismissed from the Navy. The commanding officer also filed a criminal libel suit against the two men that led to them being placed in jail awaiting the outcome of the lawsuit. Shaw and Marven asked Congress for help, explaining that they had been arrested for doing what they believed to be their duty.
Appalled, the Continental Congress then enacted in 1778 the nation's first whistleblower protection law by unanimous consent, authorized money to defend the two men and ordered that Hopkins be fired. Shaw and Marven won the lawsuit.

1968 - A. Ernest Fitzgerald

The "godfather of the defense movement" is what some people call A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a long-time government employee and government whistleblower. In 1968, Fitzgerald reported a $2.3 billion cost overrun involving the Lockheed C-5 transport aircraft. His testimony before Congress in 1968 and 1969 about the problems in defense contracting resulted in the renegotiation of the Air Force's contract with Lockheed Corp. and saved the government $273 million.

Fitzgerald was also instrumental in the passage of the law which later lead to the landmark Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, a U.S. federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct.

1969 - Ron Ridenhour

Ronald Ridenhour revealed the Mai Lai village massacre during the Vietnam War.
Ridenhour heard about an American Infantry Division that massacred a group of Vietnamese civilians. He wrote President Richard Nixon, the Defense Secretary, and members of Congress detailing that on March 16, 1968, a company of the 23rd Infantry Division killed about 175 to 400 Vietnamese civilians.

The letters sparked an Army investigation that led to indictments, public disclosure of the massacre, and the leader's conviction.
Ridenhour went on to be an investigative journalist.

1971 - Frank Serpico

Frank Serpico blew the whistle on police corruption in NYC in the late 1960s and 1970s. His testimony in 1971 was the centerpiece of hearings that sparked the biggest shakeup in the history of the NYC police department.

Serpico, the first NYC police officer to testify about widespread corruption, presented evidence about the taking of bribes estimated to be in the millions of dollars by some of the members of Gotham's law enforcement community. After reports to City Hall were ignored, Serpico and another police officer, David Durk, went to The New York Times where a front-page story led to the creation of the Knapp Commission to investigate police corruption.

Serpico retired from the force on a medical disability in 1972.

1971 - Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg is a military analyst who in 1971 gave what came to be known as the "The Pentagon Papers" to several newspapers.
The Pentagon Papers was is top secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making regarding the Vietnam War. The study revealed that, even though the strategies used in the war were believed to be unwinnable, the war was escalated.

Ellsberg first gave the papers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but when nothing happened, he released the papers to several newspapers in 1971.

Charges brought against Ellsberg under the Espionage Act of 1917 were dismissed in 1973 because of governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering.

1972 - Perry Fellwock

Many years ago, the National Security Agency was one of the most secret agencies in existence. Perry Fellwock is a former NSA analyst who revealed the existence of the agency and its worldwide covert surveillance network in a magazine interview, using the pseudonym Winslow Peck, in 1971.
Working from an unmarked headquarters and with a budget larger than that of the CIA, the NSA played a key role in nearly every major geopolitical and military event of the Cold War, with almost no public scrutiny.

Fellwock was motivated by Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers.

1973 - Mark Felt

FBI Associate Director Mark Felt provided critical information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal under the name "Deep Throat."

In 1972, five men (who were found to be Republican operatives) in business suits were arrested inside the Democrats' national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, a hotel and office building in Washington D.C. Their pockets were stuffed with $100 bills and eavesdropping and photographic equipment. The scandal and attempted coverup by President Nixon led to his resignation in 1974.

1972 - Peter Buxtun

Peter Buxtun is the whistleblower whose actions led to the ending of the infamous experiment - the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" - by government doctors to study the progression of the venereal disease in African-American men.

Buxtun, a former employee of the United States Public Health Service, was shocked to discover that, as part of a long-term study, PHS, had told about 400 Black men with syphilis that they had "bad blood." When funding was cut, the study deliberately went forward without therapy for decades even when penicillin was found to be an effective treatment.

In 1972, Buxtun leaked information on the Tuskegee experiment to a Washington Star reporter. The story became front-page news and lead to Congressional hearings.

1974 - Karen Silkwood

Karen Silkwood was a lab analyst and union activist at an Oklahoma nuclear facility. She became concerned about health and safety issues at the plant. In 1974, Silkwood testified before the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns.

On several occasions, Silkwood discovered that her apartment was contaminated with high levels of plutonium. The highest concentration was in her bathroom and in a sandwich in her refrigerator.

Silkwood died in a mysterious car accident in November 1974 while on the way to meet a New York Times reporter and an official of her union's national office.

1977 - Frank Snepp

Frank Snepp is a journalist and former CIA chief analyst of America's strategy during the Vietnam war whose 1977 book was one of the first revelations of the inner workings, secrets and failures of an American security agency.

Snepp resigned from the agency upset at the agency's refusal to acknowledge mistakes made in its Vietnam strategy, including the pull-out of American forces during the fall of Saigon. Snepp wrote a memoir of the event, Decent Interval, published in 1977 without prior approval from the CIA Publications Review Board.

The whistleblowing book caused quite a stir, generating front page coverage in The New York Times. But, the CIA took a dim view of the book and successfully sued Snepp for violating a clause in his employment contract requiring approval of books prior to publication.

1984 - John M. Gravitt

John M. Gravitt, who worked as a foreman for GE in the 1980's, reported that his superiors were billing the government for work done on the B-1 Bomber when the time was actually spent on other GE projects. Gravitt was fired shortly after making his complaint and told to sue GE under the False Claim Act of 1863, the first suit of it's kind in 40 years. The suit was settled in 1989 for an undisclosed amount, but was reportedly more $3.5 million. Gravitt's use of the False Claim Act led to federal legislation that made it easier for employees to file claims under the False Claim Act.

1995 - Mark Whitacre

Mark Whitacre, a former Archer Daniels Midland Co. executive, blew the whistle on the largest price-fixing scandal in the United States.
In 1992, as part of an investigation into corporate espionage and sabotage initiated by the company, an agricultural-commodities processing powerhouse, Whitacre told an FBI agent that he and other ADM executives were involved in an illegal, multinational price-fixing scheme. Whitacre agreed to act as an inside informant for the FBI and helped build a case against the company. Whitacre "wore a wire" and worked with FBI agents to collect information and record conversations with both ADM executives and its competitors.

In 1996, ADM paid a $100 million fine after pleading guilty to fixing the price of lysine, an additive used in animal feed, and citric acid, a food additive.

1996 - Linda Tripp

Linda Tripp is a former government worker who secretly recorded her phone conversations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky where the intern recanted her intimate physical contact with President Bill Clinton. Lewinsky's allegations of a relationship with the president caused a scandal in the mid-1990s and led to the Democratic president's impeachment.

Tripp had become a close friend to Lewinsky when they both worked at the Pentagon in the public affairs office. Tripp, who has said she acted on the advice of a literary agent, began to secretly record the phone conversations with the much younger girl.

In January 1998, Tripp revealed the recordings to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was leading the Clinton Whitewater investigation, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping.

1996 - Jeffrey Wigand

Jeffrey Wigand is the former head of research and development at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., a company that manufactured cigarettes and snuff.

Wigand became nationally known as a whistleblower in February 1996, when he appeared on the CBS news program "60 Minutes" and said that higher-ups at Brown & Williamson had knowingly approved additives to their cigarettes that were known to cause cancer and to be addictive.

2001 - Sherron Watkins

Watkins was an executive at Enron Corporation, a Houston, TX energy trading company. In 2001, she sent a memo to the CEO detailing accounting loopholes and shell corporations valued at millions of dollars but whose only asset was declining shares of Enron stock.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and several of Enron's executives went to jail.

The scandal led to the dissolution of one of the largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world. In 2002, Arthur Anderson surrendered its licenses to practice as Certified Public Accountants after being found guilty of criminal charges relating to the auditing.

2002 - Cynthia Cooper

In 2002, Cynthia Cooper, the Vice President of Internal Audit at Worldcom, now known as MCI, carried on a secret investigation, after discovering some suspicious entries in the company's books, that uncovered about $3.8 billion in corporate fraud.

The telecommunications company was the second-largest long-distance phone company in the country until the accounting scandal led to the company filing for bankruptcy protection.

Cooper's revelations also lead to the imprisonment of five of Worldcom's executives, including its chief executive officer.
For her role in discovering the billion-dollar fraud, the financial whistleblower was one of three people named as Time magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2002. Whistleblowers Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins also achieved that same honor in 2002.

2002 - Coleen Rowley

The FBI Special Agent revealed the FBI's D.C. headquarters' failure to "connect the dots" when presented with information about Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan flight student arrested on a visa overstay. Moussaoui was later indicted as a co-conspirator for 9/11.

Rowley wrote to then FBI director Robert Mueller that Moussaoui's Al Qaeda and Chechen terrorist connections had been discovered about 30 days before 9/11.

Rowley's 2002 testimony helped begin the FBI reorganization with emphasis on information sharing with other intelligence agencies and expansion of personnel with counterterrorism and language skills.

2002 - William Binney

In 2002, William Binney, a 30-year veteran with the National Security Agency, along with two other men, asked the Defense Department's Inspector General to investigate an electronic data gathering program, Trailblazer, for being a waste of taxpayer money. The investigation later concluded that Trailblazer was a billion-dollar failure.

Binney was also critical of the agency, saying that the NSA used the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 as a justification to start indiscriminate data collection, actions that he views as violating the U.S. Constitution.

2004 - Joe Darby

Darby is a former U.S. Army reservist who revealed the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Gharib Prison in Baghdad.
In 2004, Darby provided two CDs of photographs to the Army's criminal investigation division. He placed an anonymous note and the CDs under his supervisor's door and describe some of his unit's members abusing the detainees.

The men that had guarded the prison were criminally charged, while others were discharged from duty and convicted. The Iraq prison commander was demoted.

2006 - Thomas Drake

Thomas Drake blew the whistle on an information gathering program selected by a government intelligence agency that was later declared by a government watchdog to be a billion-dollar failure.

The former senior executive at the National Security Agency criticized the selection of a tool to collect intelligence from the Internet, the Trailblazer Project, over another program, ThinThread, that cost less and, in Drake's opinion, didn't violate American consumers' privacy.
Drake started talking to a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2006 when his attempts to use the process for government employees to report questionable activities did not produce any results.

In April 2010 the government brought several charges against Drake, but pleaded guilty to a single charge of exceeding the authorized use of a government computer.

2008 - Harry Markopolos

No One Would Listen is Markopolos's book about his attempts to blow the whistle on billion-dollar wealth management adviser Bernard L. Madoff.
Markopolos realized Madoff's system couldn't have worked as claimed after he analyzed the reports about the financial gains Madoff obtained for his clients.

In 2000, 2001, and 2005, he went to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to notify them, but was ignored.
Madoff was uncovered in 2008 when his sons contacted the FBI. In 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

2009 - Bradley Birkenfeld

Birkenfeld enabled the government to snare tax evaders and led to the erosion of the Swiss banking system's client secrecy.
In 2005, Birkenfield learned that his employer's dealings with its American clients violated an agreement between UBS and the IRS. The Swiss banking system was known as a tax haven for offshore assets.

Birkenfield then told the Department of Justice. In 2009, UBS was fined $780 million and was ordered to release information on American tax evaders. In 2012, Birkenfeld received $104 million from the IRS Whistleblower Office.

2012 - Joshua Harman

Harman is the whistleblower in a 2012 lawsuit against Trinity Industries, Inc, manufacturer highway guardrails. In 2012, Harman, a manufacturer of a rival guardrail system, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the government under the federal False Claims Act against Trinity over the ET-Plus guardrail, a redesigned guardrail that Trinity started producing in 2005. Harman investigated hundreds of guardrail accidents and says he documented over 40 deaths and 100 injuries involving the redesigned system. Harman said Trinity made several changes to the ET-Plus without notifying the Federal Highway Administration.

In 2015, a Texas federal judge fined Trinity $663 million for defrauding the government. Harman was awarded $199 million. However, in September 2017, the decision against Trinity was reversed on appeal.

2013 - Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning U.S. Army soldier who passed to Wikileaks in 2010 thousands of pages of military-related documents.
The disclosures included videos of a July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and a 2009 airstrike in Afghanistan and U.S. diplomatic cable and Army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary. In news reports, Manning said she released the documents "to show the true cost of war."

The material was published by WikiLeaks and its media partners - The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel - between April 2010 and April 2011. Publication of the leaked material attracted worldwide coverage.

Manning was court-martial in July 2013 and ordered to serve 35 years; but, in January 2017, President Barack Obama commuted all but four months of her remaining sentence.

2013 - Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, a computer professional, created the biggest intelligence leak in the National Security Agency's history in 2013 when he released classified information without authorization.

Snowden's disclosures revealed a number of global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and a global alliance of intelligence agencies with the assistance of several telecommunication companies.

Snowden is reported to have said that he couldn't allow the U.S. government to "destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties."
Shortly after the release, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property.

Snowden reportedly lives in Russia after having been granted asylum by the Russian government in 2013.

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Whistleblowers are individuals who come forward to disclose critical information about wrongdoings and frauds. It was in 1863 that Abraham Lincoln enacted the False Claims Act. Under this Act, whistleblowers may receive rewards for exposing wrongdoings in the form of a percentage of the total sum recovered through their efforts.

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‘Whistleblowing Is Really In Our DNA’: A History Of Reporting Wrongdoing

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Whistleblowing dates back to the nation’s earliest days. It’s been a risky and controversial exercise ever since.

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The Facebook Files, Part 1: The Whitelist

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Listen to this episode from The Journal. on Spotify. The Facebook Files, an investigative series from The Wall Street Journal, dives into an extensive array of internal Facebook documents, giving an unparalleled look inside the social media giant.

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Part 2: 'We Make Body Image Issues Worse'

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Part 2: 'We Make Body Image Issues Worse'

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The Facebook Files, Part 2: 'We Make Body Image Issues Worse'

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Part 3: 'This Shouldn't Happen on Facebook'

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Part 3: 'This Shouldn't Happen on Facebook'

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The Facebook Files, Part 3: ‘This Shouldn’t Happen on Facebook’

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The Facebook Files, Part 4: The Outrage Algorithm

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Listen to this episode from The Journal. on Spotify. In the fourth episode of our investigative series based on an extensive array of internal Facebook documents, we explore the fallout of a major algorithm change the company made in 2018. The documents outline how an emphasis on engagement incentivized the spread of divisive, sensational content and misinformation.

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The Facebook Files, Part 5: The Push To Attract Younger Users

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Listen to this episode from The Journal. on Spotify. In the fifth part of our series looking deep inside Facebook, we examine the company's efforts to win over young children. Reporter Georgia Wells discusses what Facebook's internal documents reveal about the company's years-long efforts to study and design products for kids.

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Q: What is the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA)?

The Whistleblower Protection Act protects "any disclosure of information" by federal government employees that they "reasonably believes evidences an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."

It prohibits retaliation such as demotions, pay cuts, or dismissals for blowing the whistle and provides legal remedies to whistleblowers who experience such retaliation. It also allows whistleblowers to make their disclosures confidentially.

Q: What is covered by "any disclosure" under the WPA?

The Whistleblower Protection Act's "any disclosure" language is deceptively broad as some information may be prohibited by law from being revealed to the public.

Under the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA), "any disclosure" was clarified to include: * Disclosures made to a supervisor * Disclosures that revealed information that had been previous disclosed * Disclosures not made in writing * Disclosures made while the employee was off duty

The WPEA also specified that disclosures could not be excluded because of the "employee or applicant's motive for making the disclosure" or because of the "amount of time which has passed since the occurrence of the events described in the disclosure."

Q: Who investigates complaints under the WPA?

Under the WPA, the Office of the Special Counsel investigates federal whistleblower complaints. These complaints can be filed confidentially.

The primary mission of the OSC is to "safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing."

Q: Who adjudicates complaints under the WPA?

The Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) is a quasi-judicial agency established in 1978 that adjudicates whistleblower complaints. The primary mission of the MSPB is to "protect the merit system principles and promote an effective federal workplace free of prohibited personnel practices."

There are three members on the panel who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Two of the three members must be of the President's own political party, while the third must be of the opposing party. Terms are for seven years.

Q: What are the remedies for retaliation under the WPA?

The Whistleblower Protection Act has provisions for the following remedies if the MSPB finds retaliation has occurred: * Reinstatement to the whistleblower's former job * Attorney's fees * Back pay (wages and benefits lost as a result of being unlawfully terminated) * Medical costs incurred * Travel expenses * Reasonable and foreseeable consequential damages * Compensatory damages (including interest, reasonable expert witness fees, and costs)

Q: Do federal employees have to report under the WPA?

No, there are several other laws that federal employees can utilize, particularly for violations of environmental laws. Federal employees can file cases under the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Solid Waste Disposal Act.

If federal employees choose to report under these laws, their complaints will be investigated by Occupational Safety and Health Administration rather than the Office of the Special Counsel and adjudicated by a statutory Administrative Law Judge rather than the Merit System Protections Board.

Q: What is NWC doing to better protect federal whistleblowers?

One of NWC's key priorities is working to ensure federal employee whistleblowers gain access to a jury trial in federal district court.

In 2009, we published an open letter along with 285 other public interest organizations and corporations demanding employees be granted the right to trial by jury.

In the years since, we have led a grassroots campaign urging Congress to pass legislation regarding federal employees' access to federal court. You can join our campaign by writing to your representatives here.

Please read the FAQ disclaimer.

The material in this FAQ may not reflect the most current legal developments. The content and interpretation of the law addressed herein is subject to revision. We disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all the contents of this website or in this FAQ. Before acting on any information or material in this web site, we strongly recommend you review these resources.

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Whistleblower Protection Act FAQ - National Whistleblower Center

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Q: What is the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA)? The Whistleblower Protection Act protects "any disclosure of information" by federal government employees that they "reasonably believes evidences an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety."

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The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) mission is to promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance the welfare of the nation's workforce. The agency enforces federal minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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European Union fines Facebook parent Meta 390M euros for privacy violations

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European Union fines Facebook parent Meta 390M euros for privacy violations

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LONDON (AP) - European Union regulators on Wednesday hit Facebook parent Meta with hundreds of millions in fines for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission imposed two fines totaling 390 million euros ($414 million) in its decision in two cases that could shake up Meta's business model of targeting users with ads based on what they do online. The company says it will appeal.
READ MORE: Meta will pay $725M to settle Facebook user privacy lawsuit
A decision in a third case involving Meta's WhatsApp messaging service is expected later this month.

Meta and other Big Tech companies have come under pressure from the European Union's privacy rules, which are some of the world's strictest. Irish regulators have already slapped Meta with four other fines for data privacy infringements since 2021 that total more than 900 million euros and have a slew of other open cases against a number of Silicon Valley companies.

Meta also faces regulatory headaches from EU antitrust officials in Brussels flexing their muscles against tech giants: They accused the company last month of distorting competition in classified ads.

The Irish watchdog - Meta's lead European data privacy regulator because its regional headquarters is in Dublin - fined the company 210 million euros for violations of EU data privacy rules involving Facebook and an additional 180 million euros for breaches involving Instagram.

The decision stems from complaints filed in May 2018 when the 27-nation bloc's privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, took effect.

Previously, Meta relied on getting informed consent from users to process their personal data to serve them with personalized, or behavioral, ads, which are based on what users search for online, the websites they visit or the videos they click on.

When GDPR came into force, the company changed the legal basis under which it processes user data by adding a clause to the terms of service for advertisements, effectively forcing users to agree that their data could be used. That violates EU privacy rules.
READ MORE: Twitter bans linking to Facebook, Instagram, other rival platforms
The Irish watchdog initially sided with Meta but changed its position after its draft decision was sent to a board of EU data protection regulators, many of whom objected.

In its final decision, the Irish watchdog said Meta "is not entitled to rely on the 'contract' legal basis" to deliver behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta said in a statement that "we strongly believe our approach respects GDPR, and we're therefore disappointed by these decisions and intend to appeal both the substance of the rulings and the fines."

Meta has three months to ensure its "processing operations" comply with the EU rules, though the ruling doesn't specify what the company has to do. Meta noted that the decision doesn't prevent it from displaying personalized ads, it only covers the legal basis for handling user data.

Max Schrems, the Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who filed the complaints, said the ruling could deal a big blow to the company's profits in the EU, because "people now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for ads or not" and can change their mind at any time.

"The decision also ensures a level playing field with other advertisers that also need to get opt-in consent," he said.

Making changes to comply with the decision could add to costs for a company already facing rising business challenges. Meta reported two straight quarters of declining revenue as advertising sales dropped because of competition from TikTok, and it laid off 11,000 workers amid broader tech industry woes.

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European Union fines Facebook parent Meta 390M euros for privacy violations

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LONDON (AP) - European Union regulators on Wednesday hit Facebook parent Meta with hundreds of millions in fines for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity.

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The attack on Brazil's Congress was stoked by social media

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The attack on Brazil's Congress was stoked by social media

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The attack on Brazil's Congress was organized publicly online. Despite being on high alert, social media companies missed signs that their platforms were being used to plan violence.

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The attack on Brazil's Congress was stoked by social media

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The attack on Brazil's Congress was organized publicly online. Despite being on high alert, social media companies missed signs that their platforms were being used to plan violence.

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3 key takeaways on the Seattle schools lawsuit against big tech

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3 key takeaways on the Seattle schools lawsuit against big tech

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The impact of social media on kids is again under sharp scrutiny.

State and federal officials are investigating whether children and teens are more vulnerable to social media addiction and messaging that promotes dangerous habits such as self harm and disordered eating.

Now, schools are ringing alarm bells.

Seattle Public Schools on Friday filed a 91-page lawsuit against the companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube in a federal district court.

The public school district alleges that students are being recommended harmful content online, exacerbating a mental health crisis, and social media companies are allowing it to happen.

Here's what you need to know about the lawsuit.

The school system accuses social media platforms of increasing students' anxiety and depression

Seattle Public Schools alleges that the very design of these platforms, which seek to maximize the amount of time users spend on them, is flawed and dangerous-particularly to kids.

They argue that the longer people stay on social media, the more ads those companies sell and thus the more money they stand to make. And some features, such as push notifications, are designed to draw users in, making it hard to ignore, especially for kids, the school district alleges.

It also references studies that suggest teens who spend a lot of time using screens are more likely to receive diagnoses of depression or anxiety, encounter cyber bullying and not get enough sleep.

According to the lawsuit, social media companies have "exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse."

The lawsuit cites a 2021 investigation by the Wall Street Journal, in which several teenage girls reported developing eating disorders or relapsing after TikTok promoted extreme diet videos to them.

The issue of potentially dangerous content on social media is not a new one.

As NPR reported in 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager, testified before Congress, saying that executives hid research about the risks the company's products posed to kids.

Since then, Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company, has ramped up safety features for teens, including efforts to prevent unwanted contact from adults, tools that let parents limit the amount of time their children spend on Instagram and age-verification technology.

"We want teens to be safe online," Meta Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis told NPR in an email. "We don't allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99% of it before it's reported to us."

She did not comment directly on the Seattle public schools' lawsuit.

Jose Castenada, a Google spokesperson, said that the company, which owns YouTube, has "introduced strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their well being." He also did not comment directly on the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Snap and a spokesperson for TikTok said they could not comment on litigation but that users' wellbeing is a priority.

The school system says it doesn't have the resources to manage a crisis made worse by social media

In the lawsuit, Seattle Public Schools says the number of students who report feeling "so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities" increased by 30% from 2009, when smartphones gained steam, to 2019, by which time they'd become ubiquitous.

"Our students - and young people everywhere - face unprecedented learning and life struggles that are amplified by the negative impacts of increased screen time, unfiltered content, and potentially addictive properties of social media," said Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Brent Jones in a statement.

But the school system says it doesn't have enough staff to treat the growing number of students seeking mental-health counseling.

"Our obligation is to create the conditions for students to thrive and have high quality learning experiences," said Jones. "The harm caused by these companies runs counter to that."

Nationwide, just over half of all public school systems say they can effectively provide mental health services to students in need according to the National Center of Education.

The Seattle-based law firm Keller Rohrback is representing the school district in the lawsuit on a contingency basis, which means attorneys will not get paid unless they win and companies are required to pay a fine, according to Tim Robinson, the head of media relations for Seattle Public Schools.

Tech companies have a powerful legal shield, but it's about to be challenged

It's nearly impossible to sue social media companies over the content on their platforms because of a law known as Section 230. Part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, it says tech companies can't be held liable for what others share on their sites.

But that could soon change.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a case that aims to limit Section 230 and puts social media companies' recommendation algorithms front and center. Those recommendation formulas are at the heart of the Seattle Public Schools' lawsuit too.

Right now, the public school system has a very steep legal road to climb, according to Ryan Calo, a professor at University of Washington's School of Law. But if the plaintiffs in the case before the Supreme Court are successful, it could open the door to this kind of argument, he said.

Calo is not involved in either lawsuit, but he does have two children in Seattle Public Schools, one in 7th grade and the other in 3rd. He said isn't surprised that this is happening in Seattle, the home of tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft, which has always been at the forefront of the internet and the digital world.

Even if the case never gets its day in court, its filing allows the school district to draw attention to the issue, Calo said.

"They can do so as a pretty compelling and sympathetic plaintiff in the form of a school district that cares about its kids."

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (en español: 888-628-9454; deaf and hard of hearing: 800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

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3 key takeaways on the Seattle schools lawsuit against big tech

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The impact of social media on kids is again under sharp scrutiny. State and federal officials are investigating whether children and teens are more vulnerable to social media addiction and messaging that promotes dangerous habits such as self harm and disordered eating. Now, schools are ringing alarm bells.

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Rohingya refugees after crossing the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and Bangladesh, in 2017. A report commissioned by Facebook found the company failed to keep its platform from being used to "foment division and incite offline violence" in Myanmar. Credit... Adam Dean for The New York Times

Facebook has long promoted itself as a tool for bringing people together to make the world a better place. Now the social media giant has acknowledged that in Myanmar it did the opposite, and human rights groups say it has a lot of work to do to fix that.

Facebook failed to prevent its platform from being used to "foment division and incite offline violence" in the country, one of its executives said in a post on Monday, citing a human rights report commissioned by the company.

"We agree that we can and should do more," the executive, Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager, wrote. He also said Facebook would invest resources in addressing the abuse of its platform in Myanmar that the report outlines.

The report, by Business for Social Responsibility, or BSR, which is based in San Francisco, paints a picture of a company that was unaware of its own potential for doing harm and did little to figure out the facts on the ground.

The report details how Facebook unwittingly entered a country new to the digital era and still emerging from decades of censorship, all the while plagued by political and social divisions.

But the report fails to look closely at how Facebook employees missed a crescendo of posts and misinformation that helped to fuel modern ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

The report recommends that Facebook increase enforcement of policies for content posted on its platform; exercise greater transparency with data that shows its progress; and engage with civil society and officials in Myanmar.

Some Facebook detractors criticized the company on Tuesday for releasing the report on the eve of the midterm elections in the United States, when the attention of the news media and many of Facebook's most vocal critics was elsewhere. Human rights groups said Facebook's pledge needed to be followed up with more concrete actions.

"There are a lot of people at Facebook who have known for a long time that the company should have done more to prevent the gross misuse of its platform in Myanmar," said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights, a nonprofit human rights organization that focuses on Southeast Asia.

"This assessment is encouraging and overdue, but the key to any assessment is implementation," Mr. Smith added.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said Facebook's actions in Myanmar would be "the acid test" to see if it became "a responsible platform manager with its own enforceable code of conduct."

In response to a question about the timing of the release of the report, Facebook said it had previously committed to publishing the report at this time. It also said the report was in line with the company's commitment to respond to growing concerns in Myanmar.

Two years after the 2016 election in the United States put the company under heightened scrutiny, Facebook has introduced a series of experiments meant to address the problem of misinformation on its platform. It has also set up fact-checking groups and altered its advertising practices to bar those who seek to spread false news.

In Myanmar, Facebook essentially is the internet - and, by extension, the only source of information - for some 20 million people, according to BSR's estimates. Mobile phones sold there already have Facebook installed.

As Facebook's presence in Myanmar grew in recent years, the company did not address what the BSR report calls a "crisis of digital literacy" in a country that was just emerging from a military dictatorship and where the internet was still new.

Many citizens in Myanmar, the report says, still do not know the basics of the internet - from using a browser to setting up an email account - and are not equipped to distinguish real information from rumor. The report warns that this could continue to be a problem for Facebook, especially during the country's general elections in 2020.

New problems could also arise related to WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Facebook that is becoming popular in Myanmar.

WhatsApp has begun to play a leading role in elections, particularly in developing countries where it is being used by political parties, religious activists and others to spread information. In India's recent elections, some WhatsApp messages were used to incite tensions while others were found to be false.

In Myanmar, the prevalence of hate speech, disinformation and bad actors on Facebook "has had a negative impact on freedom of expression, assembly and association for Myanmar's most vulnerable users," the report says. This has led to the suppression of free speech; violence and hate campaigns; and self-censorship by women, minorities and other vulnerable members of society.

Myanmar military officials were behind a systematic campaign on Facebook to target a mostly Muslim Rohingya minority, an investigation by The New York Times found. Human rights groups say this campaign has led to murder, rape and forced migration.

Facebook took down the official accounts of military leaders in August. But some activists said the company still had not done enough.

"I don't think there will be a significant change," said Ye Wai Phyo Aung, the founder of Athan, a free-speech organization. Facebook should do more to prevent fake accounts from being created, he said.

"It's still easy to sign up for a Facebook account with fake names," he said. "The Facebook team should have worked on that."

Not everyone in Myanmar agreed with the blame placed on Facebook. Ye Myat Thu, the managing director of Alpha Computer Mandalay, an information technology firm, said the government needed to take action to enforce better behavior online and prevent violence.

"Facebook is just the platform," he said. "If there is no Facebook, people will use another platform. I see Facebook just as a product."

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Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (Published 2018)

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Facebook has long promoted itself as a tool for bringing people together to make the world a better place. Now the social media giant has acknowledged that in Myanmar it did the opposite, and human rights groups say it has a lot of work to do to fix that.

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Historical Context: Tobacco Knew, and was Silent on Hazards

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Historical Context: Tobacco Knew, and was Silent on Hazards

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Tobacco Company Was Silent on Hazards (Published 1994)

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Username: 27-99969
Password: bigchalk

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Behavioral Scientist| Professor and Chair of Public Health

​

​

I'm a behavioral scientist, Professor of Public Health, and department chair with over two decades of experience in mixed-methods research. Over the past two decades, my research trajectory has evolved from (1) developing, implementing and evaluating cancer prevention and control interventions to (2) using the physical and social environment in New York City as my laboratory to (3) improving understanding about how emerging social media addresses propagated epidemics and chronic illness.

Collectively, this work has common themes that have and will continue to define the nature and scope of translating basic and clinical research into behavioral and educational interventions to improve population health, describing physical and social determinants of health, and reducing health disparities. Further, I aim to improve understanding about ways to help people make informed decisions about personal and community health.

​

The methods used in my research have included focus groups, interviews, surveys, social listening, and in-depth content analysis. A major focus of my current work relates to content of information on the internet with a focus on misinformation, disinformation and digital crisis interaction. I am currently the COVID-19 Section Editor and an Editorial Board member at Journal of Medical Internet Research.

My work, which has relied on both quantitative and qualitative methods comprises over 150 original empirical studies, which are reported in over 230 peer-reviewed scientific publications indexed by the National Library of Medicine.

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Behavioral Scientist| Professor and Chair of Public Health ​ ​ I'm a behavioral scientist, Professor of Public Health, and department chair with over two decades of experience in mixed-methods research.

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Twitter, Meta and TikTok dominated 2022. What will the social media landscape look like in 2023?

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The world of social media is always changing, and 2023 is likely going to see more change, especially after a year like 2022.

Social media is such an integral part of modern life that any change on a platform can be seismic, and this past year was defined by change. TikTok's star continued to rise, Meta struggled to maintain relevance as Mark Zuckerberg committed to the Metaverse and Twitter imploded under Elon Musk.

Northeastern University experts say the social media landscape in 2023 will continue to be defined by these power players--but in ways that we might not expect.

TikTok remained one of the biggest social media successes of 2022 and will likely stay that way in 2023, says John Wihbey, associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern. But factors on the world political stage could impact the platform, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Congress is considering banning TikTok on U.S. government phones as part of its massive spending bill, and more than 15 states have banned the app on government-issued devices. As relations between the U.S. and China continue to evolve, the platform could face even more regulatory barriers.

"One could imagine--should things continue to heat up between the United States and China--that the company could start to get squeezed by regulators," Wihbey says. "Some of the bloom may come off the rose a bit because elites and leaders in the United States start really focusing on this issue. TikTok may become more of a political football in the way that Facebook did after 2016."

However, more broadly, TikTok's algorithm poses questions that the world at large is only starting to consider, Wihbey says.

"TikTok, for all of its dazzle and for all of its innovation, doesn't change the underlying concern that we're basically engineering platforms to harness human attention in ways that are somewhat deceptive, probably harmful, not great for, particularly, young people," Wihbey says "That is one thing that we have to grapple with."

Moving into 2023, the biggest question mark in social media is still Twitter. After purchasing the platform for $44 billion, Elon Musk spent his time as CEO laying off employees and raising the ire of Twitter users with policy changes on the platform, some of which were made based on the results of informal Twitter polls. Musk announced this week he would be stepping down as CEO and looking for a replacement, but does that mean his successor will be able to right the ship?

"At the end of the day it's not going to solve any issues because at the end of the day it's still not clear if Elon fully treats Twitter like another engineering company, like Tesla or SpaceX, or if he's attuned to the fact that it's very much a company that depends on understanding human dynamics and how humans interact," says Yakov Bart, a Northeastern associate professor of marketing.

Regardless of how Twitter moves forward, Musk's chaotic tenure as CEO has already started ripples that could cascade into tidal waves in 2023.

In the wake of Musk's handling of Twitter, new platforms have risen. Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform, is the most prominent. The platform has amassed 2.5 million monthly active users, which is still a fraction of Twitter's 450 million but it proves that social media alternatives outside corporate-controlled options are feasible.

"Will Mastodon turn into a world superpower? No," says Rahul Bhargava, an assistant professor of art, design and journalism at Northeastern. "Will it become a viable alternative? Actually, I think it might, which is great. We need more social media channels, and we need alternatives. We can't let this important communicative scaffolding be governed by three capitalist American corporations."

Mastodon might not be the next killer app, but Bart says it's highly possible that an entirely new platform could step in to fill the Twitter shaped hole in the market. Social media success is a game of exponential growth where platforms rise and fall rapidly once they gain or lose traction.

​​"It's entirely plausible that a platform we've barely noticed today will be the biggest talk of the town in 2023 because the nature of the social media platforms is such that the network effects are strong," Bart says.

As for Facebook, Bhargava argues Meta's approach to the platform "dooms them to failure."

"Facebook can't succeed anymore unless they invent something that's used by multiple billions of people," Bhargava says. "There's only so many things that could be used by multiple billions of people."

The company's value tanked in 2022, dropping about 70% in less than a year, due in part to lack of confidence that the metaverse, Zuckerberg's vision of an immersive, VR-driven social experience, will be that billion-user idea. Bart expects Meta will start integrating some elements of the metaverse into Facebook and Instagram in 2023, but the platform's success in the new year will live or die based on Facebook's ability to "emulate the competition."

"Certainly, they're trying to figure out if they can copy this 'secret sauce' of TikTok," Bart says. "The quality of recommendations is fantastic, which keeps people glued to TikTok. I think Facebook will try to replicate it by trying to optimize which recommended content they show in the newsfeed on Facebook."

As with most things in social media, the best way to see into the future is by looking at the younger generations. Gen Z's social media habits are already charting a future for how the technology will be used moving forward.

"We always have to watch the younger crowd and its tastes and trends changing because that will influence things upstream for the older generations," says Wihbey. Are they as enamored of very public facing social platforms where you're essentially publishing out to the world? Maybe not. Maybe they are going to be more into encrypted apps. ... Maybe they are going to be much more guarded about their data and how they express themselves."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Twitter, Meta and TikTok dominated 2022. What will the social media landscape look like in 2023?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world of social media is always changing, and 2023 is likely going to see more change, especially after a year like 2022. Social media is such an integral part of modern life that any change on a platform can be seismic, and this past year was defined by change.

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‘The Last Straw’: Twitter Users Rage Over Elon Musk’s Latest Actions

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Fury mounted over Mr. Musk’s moves to prevent Twitter users from sharing links to other social media platforms. The billionaire also asked whether he should remain as head of the service.

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Instagram Chief Outlines Key Areas of Focus for the App in 2023

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Instagram Chief Outlines Key Areas of Focus for the App in 2023

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What's coming next for IG? Here are the platform's three key areas of focus.

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Musk's Twitter to lift ban on political ads 'in coming weeks'

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Reversal of course: Twitter Safety's account announced the changes in a tweet Tuesday evening, saying, "We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US."

The company also announced plans to expand political advertising, but didn't set a specific time frame beyond "weeks."

It's the latest in a series of Musk moves that have reversed policies that were put in place under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey banned all political ads in November 2019, saying in an October 2019 Twitter thread that paying for political reach "has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle."

Additionally, Twitter's former Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal tweeted that political advertising accounted for less than $3 million in the 2018 midterm cycle. Twitter's total revenue was $3 billion in 2018.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on why it reversed the policies.

Issue-based ads are OK: Twitter reversed Dorsey's restrictions on issue-based (or cause-based) ads - set in November 2019 - that banned the promotion of such ads and required advertiser certification for ads that "educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes."

Musk has radically reshaped the platform since he bought it for $44 billion, laying off thousands of employees, overseeing a mass exodus of top executives and earning a sharp warning from the FTC.

Prior to Musk's takeover, 90 percent of Twitter's revenue came from advertising, but major advertisers have backed away following Musk's free-wheeling approach to content moderation. Musk launched a revamped version of a $8 monthly Twitter Blue subscription service late last year, and lifting political and issue-based ad bans could be another source of revenue for the company.

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Musk's Twitter to lift ban on political ads 'in coming weeks'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reversal of course: Twitter Safety's account announced the changes in a tweet Tuesday evening, saying, "We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US." The company also announced plans to expand political advertising, but didn't set a specific time frame beyond "weeks."

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Suing Social Media: Families say social media algorithms put their kids in danger | 60 Minutes

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Suing Social Media: Families say social media algorithms put their kids in danger | 60 Minutes

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Original Paper

¹ Department of Public Health, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, United States

² Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Western University, London, ON, Canada

³ Department of Mathematics, Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx, NY, United States

Corresponding Author:

Corey H Basch, MPH, EdD

Department of Public Health

William Paterson University

300 Pompton Rd

Wayne, NJ, 07470

United States

Phone: 1 973 720 2603

Email: baschc@wpunj.edu

Background: Social media platforms that are based on the creation of visual media, such as TikTok, are increasingly popular with adolescents. Online social media networks provide valuable opportunities to connect with each other to share experiences and strategies for health and wellness.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the content of the hashtag #mentalhealth on TikTok.

Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive content analysis study included 100 videos with the hashtag #mentalhealth on TikTok. All videos that included the hashtag #mentalhealth were analyzed and coded for the presence of content categories. Additionally, the comments to each video were viewed and coded for content in the following themes: offering support or validation; mentioning experience with suicide or suicidal ideation; mentioning experience with self-harm; describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues; describing other mental health issues; and sharing coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better.

Results: Collectively, the 100 videos studied received 1,354,100,000 views; 266,900,000 likes; and 2,515,954 comments. On average, each video received 13,406,930.69 (SD 8,728,095.52) views; 2,657,425.74 (SD 1,449,920.45) likes; and 24,910.44 (SD 21,035.06) comments. The only content category observed in most (51/100, 51%) of the videos included in the sample was "general mental health." The remaining content categories appeared in less than 50% of the sample. In total, 32% (32/100) of the videos sampled received more than the overall average number of likes (ie, more that 2.67 million likes). Among these 32 videos, 23 (72%) included comments offering support or validation and 20 (62%) included comments that described other mental health issues or struggles.

Conclusions: With over 1 billion cumulative views, almost half of the assessed TikTok videos included in this study reported or expressed symptoms of mental distress. Future research should focus on the potential role of intervention by health care professionals on social media.

JMIR Form Res 2022;6(5):e38340

doi:10.2196/38340

Keywords

Access to accurate and accessible health information, support, and services are required for effective health care decision-making. This applies across the health care continuum and is inclusive of self-health promotion and participation in shared decision-making with health care provider teams [-]. Individuals rely on family, friends, and health care professionals for support, yet seek health-related information online at the same time [,]. In general, adolescents live in a hybrid reality-a mix of offline and online worlds []. They are increasingly seeking information about healthy lifestyles (fitness, diet), gender identity, sexual health, and mental health issues from online websites, social media platforms, wearable self-tracking apps, and other adolescents within online communities [,]. However, adolescents are less accepting of online or wearable apps that require them to input information []. Overall, online media and social media apps are seen as simple to use, unidentifiable, and impartial sources of health information by adolescents [,]. Health-related stories from peers are particularly valued among adolescents [,]. Influencers on social media, adolescents who create content, and microcelebrities are increasingly important resources for health-related information and social support [,-]. However, adolescents may find the sheer volume of online information challenging and are not always confident in their ability to discern accurate information from misinformation or disinformation [].

Social media platforms that are based on the creation of visual media, such as TikTok, are popular with adolescents. TikTok, a video-based social media platform, has been leveraged as a way to disseminate health-related information, and this has been especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic []. The vast reach of TikTok worldwide offers a unique approach for disseminating information to the millions of users ranging from children to adults. As a social media platform, TikTok creators combine music and dance attached to personal messages that are widely disseminated [].

Data Collection and Analysis

Additionally, the comments associated with each video were viewed and coded inductively for content in the following themes: offering support or validation; mentioning experience with suicide or suicidal ideation; mentioning experience with self-harm; describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues; describing other mental health issues or struggles; and sharing coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better. All data were collected, categorized, and organized by a single reviewer (CJ), and a random number generator was used to identify a subset of (10%) the videos to be analyzed by a second reviewer (CB) to determine interrater reliability. The interrater reliability score (κ=0.97) indicated a high level of consensus. Microsoft Excel was used to record, organize, and analyze the data collected.

Ethical Considerations

This study was excluded from institutional ethics board review, as the William Paterson University Institutional Review Board does not review studies that do not involve human participants.

Overall, the 100 videos studied received 1,354,100,000 views; 266,900,000 likes; and 2,515,954 comments. On average, each video received 13,406,930.69 (SD 8,728,095.52) views; 2,657,425.74 (SD 1,449,920.45) likes; and 24,910.44 (SD 21,035.06) comments. Of the 100 videos, a majority (n=84, 84%) were classified as consumer-generated; only 13 (13%) were classified as influencer- or verified-user-generated, with the remaining classified as heath care professional-generated (n=1, 1%), television- or internet-based news (n=1, 1%), and television-based entertainment (n=1, 1%).

In , the first column lists the 14 different content categories of the video data and the second column details how many of the 100 videos sampled included this content. The table also includes the number of views, likes, and comments that the videos with these particular features garnered. Relative percentages from the total are included as well. The content category "statistics and prevalence of mental health disorders or issues" was omitted from the table since it was not featured in any of the sampled videos.

The only content category observed in a majority (51/100, 51%) of the videos sampled was "general mental health." The remaining content categories appeared in less than 50% of the sample. "Personal experience" was the next most prevalent category observed in the videos and it appeared in 40% (40/100) of the sample. The remaining content categories appeared in less than 20% of the sample, with the following 5 content categories appearing in less than 5% of the sample: anxiety or fear, physical health conditions or variables, stress, mental health stigma, and missing other people or connections due to COVID-19.

provides information about the themes noted in the videos' comments. This table shows 6 different themes, the number of videos with comments that reflected these themes, and the associated number of views, likes, and comments of these videos. The most common themes observed in the videos' comments sections were "offering support or validation" (61/100, 61%) and "describing other mental health issues or struggles" (49/100, 49%).

In total, 32% (32/100) of the videos sampled received more than the overall average number of likes (ie, more than 2.67 million likes). Among these 32 videos, 23 (72%) included comments offering support or validation and 20 (62%) included comments describing other mental health issues or struggles. The remaining themes were included in ≥10 videos: shared coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better (10/32, 31%); describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues (7/32, 22%); mentioning experiences with suicide or suicide ideation (6/32, 19%); and mentioning experience with self-harm (2/32, 6%).

The frequently used words excerpted from the comments section of the TikTok platform are shown in -. shows the negative sentiments portrayed in the comments that reflect serious mental health concerns, which were expressed in response to participant-posted TikTok videos depicting issues of depression, grief, sadness, anger, loneliness, and trauma. In contrast, shows social support and collective optimism in the comments about the posted TikTok videos. These comments were caring and reflected encouragement, praise, and acceptance. It is important to note that these comments were generally presented in the context of support from those who allegedly have shared experiences or trauma.

Table 1. Observed content, views, likes, and comments of 100 TikTok videos on mental health.

Table 2. Themes noted in the videos' comments and the associated number of views, likes, and comments.

Principal Findings

It is important to note the reach of the videos included in this study. With over 1 billion cumulative views, almost half of the assessed TikTok videos included in this study reported or expressed symptoms of mental distress. Other studies have observed the expression of mental ill-health within online social media platforms [] and expressed concern about potentially traumatic and "triggering" TikTok videos as being detrimental to some viewers []. This is especially concerning given the frequency of screen time among adolescents. Many adolescents are predominant TikTok participants, and there is a potential for contribution to poor mental health outcomes from repetitious and prolonged viewing, especially if traumatic events are featured in the videos []. Recently, TikTok has acknowledged the substantial impact of their platform on users' mental health and have provided additional resources in support of user safety, health, and mental wellness []. Specific to the issues of mental health, TikTok has produced well-being guides in partnership with the several international mental health organizations to support and uptake optimal messaging on the TikTok platform []. However, there is limited insight into the impact of traumatic or "triggering" events posted within the online platform [], the use and impact of the TikTok mental health resources, or conversely, the health enhancing impact of positive and supportive messaging among youth who engage with social media [,]

Over 60% of the videos in this study had associated comments that were supportive and validating; this can signify the importance of the TikTok platform and the hashtag #mentalhealth as a possible "just-in-time" source of social support and personal validation that is made available without the need for planning, scheduling, and financial renumeration. Notably, comments that depict coping strategies were not overly common; they were apparent in about 10% of the videos with high numbers of collective views. Given the seriousness of the topics, these findings point to the fact that videos alone only tell part of the story. Health care professionals are active on social media and, specifically, TikTok [,]. Comp et al [] noted that TikTok therapists, some with millions of followers, are actively providing corrective information to mental health misinformation and combatting mental health stigma on TikTok.

However, it is important to note that the videos in this sample were largely posted by consumers and not by health care professionals. Hence, further research is needed on the extent to which corrective mental health information is prevalent on popular mental health hashtags. Further, our findings indicate that health care professionals, particularly those who aim to provide corrective information, should be aware of and attend to both the video content and its related commentary.

Future Implications

Limitations

The findings of this study offer insight into the use of TikTok to discuss mental health issues. However, this study is limited by the cross-sectional design. Further, the inclusion of English-only TikTok posts is limiting; videos posted in other languages may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the mental health conversations posted using the hashtag #mentalhealth. Other hashtags that specify a mental health illness or experience (suicide, anxiety, or depression) may have captured different videos than those captured by the generic use of hashtag #mentalhealth. Nonetheless, this study can serve as a foundation for further research to assess both the video content and its associated discussions, which are both important components to consider in studying mental health content on TikTok.

Conflicts of Interest

CHB serves as an Editorial Board Member for JMIR; she did not have a role in the review or editorial process for this article. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest.
‎

Multimedia Appendix 1

Negative mental health sentiments portrayed in the comments associated with 100 TikTok videos.
PNG File , 1235 KB
‎

Multimedia Appendix 2

Sentiments of social support and collective optimism portrayed in the comments associated with 100 TikTok videos.
PNG File , 1466 KB

Edited by A Mavragani; submitted 29.03.22; peer-reviewed by T Mathews, A Pal; comments to author 21.04.22; revised version received 29.04.22; accepted 01.05.22; published 19.05.22

©Corey H Basch, Lorie Donelle, Joseph Fera, Christie Jaime. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 19.05.2022.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

Background: Social media platforms that are based on the creation of visual media, such as TikTok, are increasingly popular with adolescents. Online social media networks provide valuable opportunities to connect with each other to share experiences and strategies for health and wellness.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the content of the hashtag #mentalhealth on TikTok.

Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive content analysis study included 100 videos with the hashtag #mentalhealth on TikTok. All videos that included the hashtag #mentalhealth were analyzed and coded for the presence of content categories. Additionally, the comments to each video were viewed and coded for content in the following themes: offering support or validation; mentioning experience with suicide or suicidal ideation; mentioning experience with self-harm; describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues; describing other mental health issues; and sharing coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better.

Results: Collectively, the 100 videos studied received 1,354,100,000 views; 266,900,000 likes; and 2,515,954 comments. On average, each video received 13,406,930.69 (SD 8,728,095.52) views; 2,657,425.74 (SD 1,449,920.45) likes; and 24,910.44 (SD 21,035.06) comments. The only content category observed in most (51/100, 51%) of the videos included in the sample was "general mental health." The remaining content categories appeared in less than 50% of the sample. In total, 32% (32/100) of the videos sampled received more than the overall average number of likes (ie, more that 2.67 million likes). Among these 32 videos, 23 (72%) included comments offering support or validation and 20 (62%) included comments that described other mental health issues or struggles.

Conclusions: With over 1 billion cumulative views, almost half of the assessed TikTok videos included in this study reported or expressed symptoms of mental distress. Future research should focus on the potential role of intervention by health care professionals on social media.

JMIR Form Res 2022;6(5):e38340

doi:10.2196/38340

Keywords

Access to accurate and accessible health information, support, and services are required for effective health care decision-making. This applies across the health care continuum and is inclusive of self-health promotion and participation in shared decision-making with health care provider teams [-]. Individuals rely on family, friends, and health care professionals for support, yet seek health-related information online at the same time [,]. In general, adolescents live in a hybrid reality-a mix of offline and online worlds []. They are increasingly seeking information about healthy lifestyles (fitness, diet), gender identity, sexual health, and mental health issues from online websites, social media platforms, wearable self-tracking apps, and other adolescents within online communities [,]. However, adolescents are less accepting of online or wearable apps that require them to input information []. Overall, online media and social media apps are seen as simple to use, unidentifiable, and impartial sources of health information by adolescents [,]. Health-related stories from peers are particularly valued among adolescents [,]. Influencers on social media, adolescents who create content, and microcelebrities are increasingly important resources for health-related information and social support [,-]. However, adolescents may find the sheer volume of online information challenging and are not always confident in their ability to discern accurate information from misinformation or disinformation [].

Social media platforms that are based on the creation of visual media, such as TikTok, are popular with adolescents. TikTok, a video-based social media platform, has been leveraged as a way to disseminate health-related information, and this has been especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic []. The vast reach of TikTok worldwide offers a unique approach for disseminating information to the millions of users ranging from children to adults. As a social media platform, TikTok creators combine music and dance attached to personal messages that are widely disseminated [].

Data Collection and Analysis

Additionally, the comments associated with each video were viewed and coded inductively for content in the following themes: offering support or validation; mentioning experience with suicide or suicidal ideation; mentioning experience with self-harm; describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues; describing other mental health issues or struggles; and sharing coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better. All data were collected, categorized, and organized by a single reviewer (CJ), and a random number generator was used to identify a subset of (10%) the videos to be analyzed by a second reviewer (CB) to determine interrater reliability. The interrater reliability score (κ=0.97) indicated a high level of consensus. Microsoft Excel was used to record, organize, and analyze the data collected.

Ethical Considerations

This study was excluded from institutional ethics board review, as the William Paterson University Institutional Review Board does not review studies that do not involve human participants.

Overall, the 100 videos studied received 1,354,100,000 views; 266,900,000 likes; and 2,515,954 comments. On average, each video received 13,406,930.69 (SD 8,728,095.52) views; 2,657,425.74 (SD 1,449,920.45) likes; and 24,910.44 (SD 21,035.06) comments. Of the 100 videos, a majority (n=84, 84%) were classified as consumer-generated; only 13 (13%) were classified as influencer- or verified-user-generated, with the remaining classified as heath care professional-generated (n=1, 1%), television- or internet-based news (n=1, 1%), and television-based entertainment (n=1, 1%).

In , the first column lists the 14 different content categories of the video data and the second column details how many of the 100 videos sampled included this content. The table also includes the number of views, likes, and comments that the videos with these particular features garnered. Relative percentages from the total are included as well. The content category "statistics and prevalence of mental health disorders or issues" was omitted from the table since it was not featured in any of the sampled videos.

The only content category observed in a majority (51/100, 51%) of the videos sampled was "general mental health." The remaining content categories appeared in less than 50% of the sample. "Personal experience" was the next most prevalent category observed in the videos and it appeared in 40% (40/100) of the sample. The remaining content categories appeared in less than 20% of the sample, with the following 5 content categories appearing in less than 5% of the sample: anxiety or fear, physical health conditions or variables, stress, mental health stigma, and missing other people or connections due to COVID-19.

provides information about the themes noted in the videos' comments. This table shows 6 different themes, the number of videos with comments that reflected these themes, and the associated number of views, likes, and comments of these videos. The most common themes observed in the videos' comments sections were "offering support or validation" (61/100, 61%) and "describing other mental health issues or struggles" (49/100, 49%).

In total, 32% (32/100) of the videos sampled received more than the overall average number of likes (ie, more than 2.67 million likes). Among these 32 videos, 23 (72%) included comments offering support or validation and 20 (62%) included comments describing other mental health issues or struggles. The remaining themes were included in ≥10 videos: shared coping strategies, experiences of healing, or ways to feel better (10/32, 31%); describing an experience with hospitalization for mental health issues (7/32, 22%); mentioning experiences with suicide or suicide ideation (6/32, 19%); and mentioning experience with self-harm (2/32, 6%).

The frequently used words excerpted from the comments section of the TikTok platform are shown in -. shows the negative sentiments portrayed in the comments that reflect serious mental health concerns, which were expressed in response to participant-posted TikTok videos depicting issues of depression, grief, sadness, anger, loneliness, and trauma. In contrast, shows social support and collective optimism in the comments about the posted TikTok videos. These comments were caring and reflected encouragement, praise, and acceptance. It is important to note that these comments were generally presented in the context of support from those who allegedly have shared experiences or trauma.

Table 1. Observed content, views, likes, and comments of 100 TikTok videos on mental health.

Table 2. Themes noted in the videos' comments and the associated number of views, likes, and comments.

Principal Findings

It is important to note the reach of the videos included in this study. With over 1 billion cumulative views, almost half of the assessed TikTok videos included in this study reported or expressed symptoms of mental distress. Other studies have observed the expression of mental ill-health within online social media platforms [] and expressed concern about potentially traumatic and "triggering" TikTok videos as being detrimental to some viewers []. This is especially concerning given the frequency of screen time among adolescents. Many adolescents are predominant TikTok participants, and there is a potential for contribution to poor mental health outcomes from repetitious and prolonged viewing, especially if traumatic events are featured in the videos []. Recently, TikTok has acknowledged the substantial impact of their platform on users' mental health and have provided additional resources in support of user safety, health, and mental wellness []. Specific to the issues of mental health, TikTok has produced well-being guides in partnership with the several international mental health organizations to support and uptake optimal messaging on the TikTok platform []. However, there is limited insight into the impact of traumatic or "triggering" events posted within the online platform [], the use and impact of the TikTok mental health resources, or conversely, the health enhancing impact of positive and supportive messaging among youth who engage with social media [,]

Over 60% of the videos in this study had associated comments that were supportive and validating; this can signify the importance of the TikTok platform and the hashtag #mentalhealth as a possible "just-in-time" source of social support and personal validation that is made available without the need for planning, scheduling, and financial renumeration. Notably, comments that depict coping strategies were not overly common; they were apparent in about 10% of the videos with high numbers of collective views. Given the seriousness of the topics, these findings point to the fact that videos alone only tell part of the story. Health care professionals are active on social media and, specifically, TikTok [,]. Comp et al [] noted that TikTok therapists, some with millions of followers, are actively providing corrective information to mental health misinformation and combatting mental health stigma on TikTok.

However, it is important to note that the videos in this sample were largely posted by consumers and not by health care professionals. Hence, further research is needed on the extent to which corrective mental health information is prevalent on popular mental health hashtags. Further, our findings indicate that health care professionals, particularly those who aim to provide corrective information, should be aware of and attend to both the video content and its related commentary.

Future Implications

Limitations

The findings of this study offer insight into the use of TikTok to discuss mental health issues. However, this study is limited by the cross-sectional design. Further, the inclusion of English-only TikTok posts is limiting; videos posted in other languages may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the mental health conversations posted using the hashtag #mentalhealth. Other hashtags that specify a mental health illness or experience (suicide, anxiety, or depression) may have captured different videos than those captured by the generic use of hashtag #mentalhealth. Nonetheless, this study can serve as a foundation for further research to assess both the video content and its associated discussions, which are both important components to consider in studying mental health content on TikTok.

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Deconstructing TikTok Videos on Mental Health: Cross-sectional, Descriptive Content Analysis

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Background: Social media platforms that are based on the creation of visual media, such as TikTok, are increasingly popular with adolescents. Online social media networks provide valuable opportunities to connect with each other to share experiences and strategies for health and wellness.

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Frances Haugen - Facebook’s Algorithm & Teen Mental Health | The Daily Show

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Whistleblower tells Congress that Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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A former Facebook employee compared the social network to Big Tobacco at a Senate hear17%ing on Tuesday, saying the company has hidden what it knows about the problems its products cause.

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says if Elon Musk wants Twitter to be a public square, he should make its algorithms open source

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has discussed Elon Musk's plans for Twitter.

Musk has previously discussed making Twitter a "town square" where vital matters could be debated.

Haugen said he should open source its algorithms to facilitate that goal, per NBC News.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said if Elon Musk wants Twitter to be a public square, he should make its algorithm open source.

Musk had previously discussed making Twitter a digital town square "where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."

Haugen discussed Musk's views in a special edition of NBC News' Meet the Press on how social media is shaping politics on Sunday morning. She said to journalist Chuck Todd: "One of the most important things Elon Musk could do to prove that he wants to have the public square is he could publish the algorithms."

"Open source it," she added. "He'd have more help - it'd be cheaper for him. It'd be more profitable."

Musk has been outspoken about one of the reasons he bought Twitter: giving "power to the people." He also explained in a memo shortly after sealing the $44 billion deal that he acquired it to promote dialogue, which he believed had been lost.

Musk wants Twitter to also be the "most accurate source of information about the world." In the weeks following the acquisition, however, he reduced the number of people who were primarily in charge of dealing with content moderation.

Haugen is a former product manager on Facebook's civic integrity team. She went public in 2021 and leaked masses of internal documents illuminating decisions, which she told Congress had led to "more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat."

In the interview with NBC News, Haugen also said social-media companies were generally opposed to government intervention since it could decrease profits by at least 20%.

"Facebook is scared," Haugen said. "If we actually had transparency, if we actually had accountability, they would not be a company with 35% profit margins. They'd be a company with 15% profit margins."

In a subsequent multi-part investigation, known as The Facebook Files, The Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram worsens body image issues for teens; Facebook saw pre-teens as an untapped market; and it has a secret system to allow 5.8 million users, including politicians and celebrities, to skirt some of its content rules.

The whistleblower previously said the company wouldn't be able to recover until CEO Mark Zuckerberg stepped down.

Meta and Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says if Elon Musk wants Twitter to be a public square, he should make its algorithms open source

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has discussed Elon Musk's plans for Twitter. Musk has previously discussed making Twitter a "town square" where vital matters could be debated. Haugen said he should open source its algorithms to facilitate that goal, per NBC News.

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Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.

Time and again, the documents show, Facebook's researchers have identified the platform's ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous media exposés, the company didn't fix them. The documents offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook's problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.

By Jeff Horwitz

Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook allows its users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture and journalism, and that its standards apply to everyone. In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules. The program, known as "cross check" or "XCheck," was intended as a quality-control measure for high-profile accounts. Today, it shields millions of VIPs from the company's normal enforcement, the documents show. Many abuse the privilege, posting material including harassment and incitement to violence that would typically lead to sanctions. Facebook says criticism of the program is fair, that it was designed for a good purpose and that the company is working to fix it. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Georgia Wells, Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman

Researchers inside Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, have been studying for years how its photo-sharing app affects millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls, more so than other social-media platforms. In public, Facebook has consistently played down the app's negative effects, including in comments to Congress, and hasn't made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. In response, Facebook says the negative effects aren't widespread, that the mental-health research is valuable and that some of the harmful aspects aren't easy to address. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Keach Hagey and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook made a heralded change to its algorithm in 2018 designed to improve its platform-and arrest signs of declining user engagement. Mr. Zuckerberg declared his aim was to strengthen bonds between users and improve their well-being by fostering interactions between friends and family. Within the company, the documents show, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect. It was making Facebook, and those who used it, angrier. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some fixes proposed by his team, the documents show, because he worried they would lead people to interact with Facebook less. Facebook, in response, says any algorithm can promote objectionable or harmful content and that the company is doing its best to mitigate the problem. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Justin Scheck, Newley Purnell and Jeff Horwitz

Scores of Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in developing countries, where its user base is huge and expanding. Employees flagged that human traffickers in the Middle East used the site to lure women into abusive employment situations. They warned that armed groups in Ethiopia used the site to incite violence against ethnic minorities. They sent alerts to their bosses about organ selling, pornography and government action against political dissent, according to the documents. They also show the company's response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all. A Facebook spokesman said the company has deployed global teams, local partnerships and third-party fact checkers to keep users safe. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Sam Schechner, Jeff Horwitz and Emily Glazer

Facebook threw its weight behind promoting Covid-19 vaccines-"a top company priority," one memo said-in a demonstration of Mr. Zuckerberg's faith that his creation is a force for social good in the world. It ended up demonstrating the gulf between his aspirations and the reality of the world's largest social platform. Activists flooded the network with what Facebook calls "barrier to vaccination" content, the internal memos show. They used Facebook's own tools to sow doubt about the severity of the pandemic's threat and the safety of authorities' main weapon to combat it. The Covid-19 problems make it uncomfortably clear: Even when he set a goal, the chief executive couldn't steer the platform as he wanted. A Facebook spokesman said in a statement that the data shows vaccine hesitancy for people in the U.S. on Facebook has declined by about 50% since January, and that the documents show the company's "routine process for dealing with difficult challenges."
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By Georgia Wells and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook has come under increasing fire in recent days for its effect on young users. Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that it could lose a wave of users critical to its future. "Why do we care about tweens?" said one document from 2020. "They are a valuable but untapped audience." Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said Facebook is not recruiting people too young to use its apps-the current age limit is 13-but is instead trying to understand how teens and preteens use technology and to appeal to the next generation. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Wall Street Journal Staff

A Senate Commerce Committee hearing about Facebook, teens and mental health was prompted by a mid-September article in The Wall Street Journal. Based on internal company documents, it detailed Facebook's internal research on the negative impact of its Instagram app on teen girls and others. Six of the documents that formed the basis of the Instagram article are published here.
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By Stephanie Stamm, John West and Deepa Seetharaman

The Wall Street Journal reviewed 10 years of Facebook annual employee lists, which showed names, titles and managers for Facebook's staffers and contract workers. The data show which teams under which executives have expanded the fastest, providing an unusually detailed public view of the company's shifting power centers and priorities.
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By Jeff Horwitz

​Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who gathered documents that formed the basis for the Journal's series, said she had grown frustrated by what she saw as the company's lack of openness about its platforms' potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws. A Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the company strives to balance free expression with safety. "To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true," he said. Listen to Ms. Haugen on the Journal's podcast.
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By Deepa Seetharaman, Jeff Horwitz and Justin Scheck

Facebook executives have long said artificial intelligence would address the company's chronic problems keeping what it deems hate speech and excessive violence off its platforms. That future is farther away than those executives suggest, according to internal documents. Employees say Facebook removes only a sliver of the posts that violate its rules, and that Facebook's AI can't consistently identify first-person shooting videos, racist rants and even, in one notable episode, the difference between cockfighting and car crashes, according to the documents. Facebook, in response, says it takes other actions to reduce how many people view content that violates its policies and that the prevalence of that material has been shrinking. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Sam Schechner and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook is struggling to detect users' creating multiple accounts on its flagship platform, according to internal documents, raising questions about how the social-media giant measures its audience. One Facebook presentation called the phenomenon of single users with multiple accounts "very prevalent" among new accounts, after an examination of roughly 5,000 recent sign-ups indicated that as many as 56% were opened by existing users. Facebook says those numbers are incorporated into estimates it discloses of duplicate accounts, and that such accounts pose a challenge for many large internet companies.
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By Jeff Horwitz and Justin Scheck

Internal Facebook documents show that people inside the company have long discussed a systematic approach to restrict features that disproportionately amplify incendiary and divisive posts. Facebook rejected those efforts because they would impede the platform's usage and growth. Instead, Facebook is making ad hoc decisions about groups it deems harmful, such as a movement by far-right activists after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to form what they called a Patriot Party. The company's approach puts it in a role of refereeing public discourse that strays from its public commitment to neutrality. Facebook acknowledges tension in its work on such viral social movements, and says it has invented new technologies and balanced difficult trade-offs to develop its solutions. (Listen to a related podcast.)
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By Newley Purnell and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook researchers documented how its platform has contributed to divisive, inter-religious conflict in India, according to internal records. The company's researchers found hate speech spiked by 300% amid bloody riots, and that Indian users held the company responsible for failing to prevent or police it. Facebook has traced some of the stream of hate to influential entities tied to India's ruling government but hasn't taken action amid concerns about "political sensitivities." Facebook says hate speech against Muslims is rising world-wide, and that the company is working to improve enforcement on its platforms.
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By Keach Hagey and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook employees and their bosses have hotly debated whether and how to restrain right-wing publishers, with more-senior employees often providing a check on agitation from the rank and file, according to internal documents viewed by the Journal. The documents, which don't capture all of the employee messaging, didn't mention equivalent debates over left-wing publications. Other documents also reveal that Facebook's management team has been so intently focused on avoiding charges of bias that it regularly places political considerations at the center of its decision making. Facebook says it enforces its rules equally and doesn't consider politics in its decisions.
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By Georgia Wells, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz

Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of the app's users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that affects their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, and the problems were perceived by users to be worse on Facebook than any other major social-media platform, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The documents highlight the company's research into the possible negative impacts on the day-to-day lives of a broad swath of users. Facebook said it has built tools and controls to help people manage when and how they use its services.
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By Keach Hagey and Jeff Horwitz

About 40% of traffic to pages in 2018 went to those with content that was plagiarized or recycled, according to the company's internal reports. The researchers said the tactic is an effective way to build a large audience and has been used by foreign and domestic groups that post divisive content and peddle false information. "This is the basic game plan used by many bad actors," one researcher wrote. Facebook says it has taken steps to address the issues, including removing fake accounts and reducing distribution of unoriginal news reporting.
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By Keach Hagey, Georgia Wells, Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz

Part of Facebook's response to the disclosures made by the whistleblower was to push politics to the forefront. The company's goal, according to Republicans and Democrats familiar with its outreach, was to muddy the waters, divide lawmakers along partisan lines and forestall a cross-party alliance that was emerging to enact tougher rules on social-media companies in general and Facebook in particular. "When our work is being mischaracterized, we're not going to apologize," said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. "We're going to defend our record."
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Facebook knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws but hasn't fixed them. That's a key finding of a Journal series that launched this week, based on an array of internal company documents. Read all the stories here.

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Frances Haugen: The Facebook Whistleblower | SXSW 2022

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Facebook Whistleblower On Social Media's Impact On Adolescent Mental Health

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Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told lawmakers Oct. 5 what policies the company could adopt to make its products safer. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

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Show more2:28 p.m. EDT 2:28 p.m. EDT
Whistleblower says she's 'actually against the breaking-up of Facebook'
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To many Facebook critics, the harms laid out by Haugen amount to a powerful argument in favor of breaking up the company. After all, she accused it of "moral bankruptcy" and painted a picture of a firm obsessed with growth and profit even at the cost of its own users' well-being.

So it may come as a surprise to some that aggressive antitrust enforcement is not in fact one of Haugen's recommendations. "I'm actually against the breaking-up of Facebook," she said in Tuesday's hearing.

"If you split Facebook and Instagram apart, it's likely that most advertising dollars would go to Instagram, and Facebook will continue to be this Frankenstein that is endangering lives around the world," she explained. "Only now there won't be money to fund" the work Facebook does on content moderation, enforcing its rules and researching its societal impacts. "And so I think oversight and regulatory oversight and finding collaborative solutions with Congress is going to be key because these systems are going to continue to exist and be dangerous, even if broken up."
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2:08 p.m. EDT 2:08 p.m. EDT
Facebook continues to try and undermine Haugen's authority
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Even after the hearing, Facebook escalated its attempts to undermine Haugen's credibility on the issues she spoke about - using Haugen's own candor against her.

"Today, a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives - and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question," said Lena Pietsch, director of policy communications.
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1:56 p.m. EDT 1:56 p.m. EDT
Top Democrat calls on Zuckerberg to testify before Senate, again
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The top Democrat on the Senate panel that heard testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said Tuesday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg should testify before the committee.

"Mark Zuckerberg should appear," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chair of Senate Commerce consumer-protection subcommittee, told reporters after the hearing. "If he is in any way in disagreement with anything that has been said here, he's the one that ought to come forward, he's the one that's in charge."

Blumenthal's panel has been investigating concerns that Facebook and other social media platforms harm children, and he has said he plans to bring in officials from other companies to testify, too.
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1:32 p.m. EDT 1:32 p.m. EDT
Senate hearing adjourns after whistleblower offers scathing indictment of Facebook
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An emotional Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) read a message from a constituent during a congressional hearing with a Facebook whistleblower on Oct. 5. (Video: Reuters)

The Senate hearing featuring testimony from a Facebook whistleblower adjourned just before 1:30 p.m., after lawmakers heard hours of testimony from Frances Haugen offering withering criticism of the tech giant.

It was a packed house in the Senate hearing room for most of the session, as senators dug into concerns about how the social network has handled everything from kids' safety to medical misinformation and beyond.

Only Facebook knows the extent of its misinformation problem. And it's not sharing, even with the White House.

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1:26 p.m. EDT 1:26 p.m. EDT
Facebook's structure prevents it from stopping vaccine misinformation, Haugen says
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Haugen told lawmakers she believes Facebook is ill-equipped to quash the spread of medical misinformation on its platforms, an issue that has drawn major scrutiny among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

"I do not believe Facebook [as its] currently structured has the capability to stop vaccine misinformation, because they are overly reliant on artificial reliant systems," she said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who posed a question on the matter to Haugen, replied, "And yet it's a company that [has a market cap that is] over a trillion dollars, one of the world's biggest companies that we've ever known, and that's what really bothers me."
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1:20 p.m. EDT 1:20 p.m. EDT
Analysis: Will this spell Facebook's demise? Don't count on it.
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In the pantheon of Facebook scandals, the whistleblower affair shares space with the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, Russian election interference and the platform's role in facilitating the Myanmar genocide. Through each of those, the company has emerged with its reputation battered but its business intact. Facebook reported record revenue last quarter of nearly $30 billion, and it boasts a staggering 3.5 billion users across its platforms, which include WhatsApp and Instagram.

So what's different this time? On the surface, not much. Though Tuesday's hearing has brought damming testimony, company is facing its latest public relations crisis with a defiant tone, projecting confidence that this, too, will pass as Facebook turns its focus to building the metaverse.
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1:13 p.m. EDT 1:13 p.m. EDT
Haugen says Facebook knows widows and other vulnerable people see more misinformation
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One of Haugen's more explosive comments was about how misinformation reaches the most vulnerable people on the platform.

She noted that Facebook's own research showed that widows and people who move to new cities - people who have the potential to be socially isolated - are the ones who are most exposed to misinformation. She said that her colleagues would refer to this exposure as a "misinformation burden," the idea that the further people go down rabbit holes, the more socially isolated they become.
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1:01 p.m. EDT 1:01 p.m. EDT
Haugen's whistleblowing will inspire more 'truth-tellers,' Blumenthal says
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Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Tuesday that Haugen's decision to come forward will serve as an example to other whistleblowers in the tech industry who want to speak out about harms their companies may be causing.

"I think there are other whistleblowers out there," he told Haugen. "I think there are other truth-tellers in the tech world who want to go forward, and I think you are leading by example."

Blumenthal, chair of the subcommittee hosting Tuesday's session, added that Haugen is "showing them that there's a path to make this industry more responsible and more caring about kids and about the nature of our public discourse."

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12:54 p.m. EDT 12:54 p.m. EDT
Haugen's counterespionage work could prompt more hearings
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Haugen opened a fresh can of worms as she noted her last job at Facebook was working on a "counterespionage team."

She did not offer many details but said her job involved trying to track how the Chinese might be using the platform to spy on Uyghurs, an ethnic minority in northwestern China that has been heavily surveilled and persecuted.

Haugen also said that the team looked into Iranian spying on the platform.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) suggested those issues might provoke another congressional hearing.
Show more12:46 p.m. EDT 12:46 p.m. EDT
Senators say they back subpoenaing Facebook for full leaked research
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A bipartisan group of senators said Tuesday they support issuing subpoenas to Facebook to obtain the full text of research disclosed by Haugen, which the company has declined to release.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) told The Washington Post during a break in Tuesday's hearing that they both back the idea of the Senate Commerce Committee compelling the tech giant to provide its internal findings. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) told a scrum of reporters he also supports the move, just before the session reconvened after noon.
Show more12:37 p.m. EDT 12:37 p.m. EDT
Haugen says Facebook could still be profitable if it eliminated engagement-based ranking
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Haugen said she believes Facebook would still be a profitable company if it did away with engagement-based ranking, which prioritizes content that users are most likely to click on or react to.

"A lot of the changes I'm talking about are not going to make Facebook an unprofitable company," she said. "It just won't be a ludicrously profitable company like it is today."

Haugen is seeking to make the case that Facebook has continually prioritized its own profits and growth over user safety. She said that the company makes about $40 billion a year in profit. She called for scrutiny of the algorithms and the impact that they have on promoting dangerous content.
Show more12:31 p.m. EDT 12:31 p.m. EDT
Analysis: How Facebook is like Big Tobacco - and how it isn't
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The debate over social media regulation will, at some point, focus on concrete policy proposals. But at this stage, in hearings such as the one Tuesday on Capitol Hill, the focus is on defining and diagnosing the nature of the problem with platforms such as Facebook.

That often plays out as a battle of analogies: To get our heads around what type of problem Facebook represents, we naturally turn to disruptive technologies and problematic industries of the past.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen and lawmakers at Tuesday's hearing have repeatedly compared Big Tech to Big Tobacco - as purveyors of products that are addictive and profitable but ultimately bad for us.
Show more12:23 p.m. EDT 12:23 p.m. EDT
Facebook's strategy: Remind people that Haugen wasn't in the room
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The hearing has reconvened. So far, Frances Haugen has come across as measured and credible, even noting at several moments that she did not work on specific issues that she was being questioned about.

But that candor has become ammunition for Facebook's public relations team. Each time Haugen said she didn't work on something - particularly on issues relating to teenagers and child safety on Instagram - the company's communications executives have tweeted to highlight that.

As she herself just said under oath, "I don't work on it."
- Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 5, 2021

It's also part of the company's messaging to employees, that Haugen doesn't know as much as she says, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to do so publicly, and part of a broader defensive strategy to sow doubt in the documents Haugen has provided.
Show more12:08 p.m. EDT 12:08 p.m. EDT
Attempts to shield whistleblower from Facebook's retaliation may not work
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Senators have repeatedly pressed Facebook executives to pledge that the company will not retaliate against the whistleblower behind the recent string of damaging leaks, since revealed to be Frances Haugen.

But while one Facebook official committed to the company not seeking retribution, another left wiggle room for the tech giant to come after Haugen for disclosing internal research.

Steve Satterfield, vice president of public policy and privacy at Facebook, pledged to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that the company would not retaliate for the leaks. "Of course it wouldn't be appropriate to retaliate against anyone," he said.
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Hearing breaks for now
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The Senate panel hearing testimony from Haugen on Tuesday took a brief break a bit before noon as lawmakers left the room to vote.

So far, Haugen has made sprawling allegations against the social media giant, accusing it of misusing its power and hurting children and other users. She lays these offenses squarely with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who she says built a system of incentivization within the company.

Senators have peppered Haugen with questions and have promised to hold Facebook accountable.

Outside the hearing hall, reporters and cameras swarmed lawmakers as they exited, pressing them about Haugen's testimony and about the next steps in their investigation into the company.
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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen tells lawmakers that meaningful reform is necessary 'for our common good'

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ListenArticle Share Show more2:28 p.m. EDT 2:28 p.m. EDT Return to menu To many Facebook critics, the harms laid out by Haugen amount to a powerful argument in favor of breaking up the company. After all, she accused it of "moral bankruptcy" and painted a picture of a firm obsessed with growth and profit even at the cost of its own users' well-being.

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Highlights From Facebook Whistleblower Testifying At Senate Hearing

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s full opening statement at Senate hearing

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More than 1,200 families suing social media companies over kids' mental health

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/ CBS News

When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook last fall, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note.

Today, there are more than 1,200 families pursuing lawsuits against social media companies including TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta, the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.

More than 150 lawsuits will be moving forward next year. Tonight, you'll hear from some of the families suing social media. We want to warn you that some of the content in this story is alarming, but we thought it was important to include because parents say the posts impacted their kids' mental health and, in some cases, helped lead to the death of their children.

Kathleen Spence: They're holding our children hostage and they're seeking and preying on them.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Preying on them?

Kathleen Spence: Yes.

The Spence family is suing social media giant Meta. Kathleen and Jeff Spence say Instagram led their daughter Alexis into depression and to an eating disorder at the age of 12.

Kathleen Spence: We realized that we were slowly losing her. We really had no comprehension to how severe social media had affected our daughter. She was being drawn into this hidden space and this dark world.

It began after the spences, both middle school teachers from Long Island, New York, gave 11-year-old Alexis a cell phone to keep in touch with them after school.

Kathleen Spence: We had very strict rules from the moment she had the phone. The phone was never allowed in the room at night. We would keep the phone in the hall.

Jeff Spence: We checked the phone. We put restrictions on the phone.

Alexis Spence: I would wait for my parents to fall asleep, and then I would just sit in the hallway or I would sneak my phone in my room. I wasn't allowed to use a lot of apps and they had a lot of the parental controls on.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And so how quickly did you figure out a way around the restrictions?

Alexis Spence: Pretty quickly.

Hoping to connect and keep up with friends, Alexis joined Instagram. Instagram policy mandates users are 13 years old. Alexis was 11.

Sharyn Alfonsi: I thought you had to be 13?

Alexis Spence: It asks you, "Are you 13 years or older?" I checked the box "yes" and then just kept going.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And there was never any checks?

Alexis Spence: No. No verification or anything like that.

Sharyn Alfonsi: If I had picked up your phone would I have seen the Instagram app on there?

Alexis Spence: No. There were apps that you could use to disguise it as another app. So, you could download like a calculator, 'calculator', but it's really Instagram.

Jeff Spence: There was always some work-around.

Sharyn Alfonsi: She was outwitting you.

Jeff Spence: Right, she was outwitting us.

Kathleen Spence: She was addicted to social media. We couldn't stop it. It was much bigger than us.

Now 20, Alexis says an innocent search on Instagram for fitness routines led her into a dark world.

Alexis Spence: It started as, like, fitness stuff. And then I guess that would spark the algorithm to show me diets, it then started to shift into eating disorders.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What were you seeing?

Alexis Spence: People would post photos of themselves who are very sickly or just very thin, and using them to promote eating disorders.

These are some of the images that were sent to Alexis through Instagram's algorithms - which process the user's browsing history and personal data, then push content to them they never directly asked for.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What did you learn from looking at these pro-anorexic websites?

Alexis Spence: A lot. Learning about diet pills and how to lose weight when you're 11 and going through puberty and, like, your body is supposed to be changing. It's hard.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When did that stop being something that you looked at and start being something that you were doing to yourself?

Alexis Spence: Within months.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Did it normalize it for you? Did you think, "Oh, well, other people are doing this"?

Alexis Spence: Yeah. Definitely. Like, they needed help. I needed help. And instead of getting help, I was getting advice on how to continue.

By the time she was 12, Alexis had developed an eating disorder. She had multiple Instagram accounts and says she would spend five hours a day scrolling through the app, even though it often made her feel depressed.

She drew this picture of herself in her diary crying, surrounded by her phone and laptop, with thoughts reading, 'stupid, fat...kill yourself.'

Alexis Spence: I was struggling with my mental health. I was struggling with my depression and my body image. And social media did not help with my confidence. And, if anything, it made me, like, hate myself.

It all came to a head her sophomore year when Alexis posted on Instagram that she didn't deserve to exist. A friend alerted a school counselor.

Kathleen Spence: That was the scariest day of our lives. I got a call to come to the school. And I went there and they were just showing me all of these Instagram posts of how Alexis wanted to kill herself and hurt herself. And if Instagram is really -- has all the software to protect them, why was that not flagged? Why was that not identified?

This previously unpublished internal document reveals Facebook knew Instagram was pushing girls to dangerous content.

It says that in 2021, an Instagram employee ran an internal investigation on eating disorders by opening up a false account as a 13-year-old girl looking for diet tips. She was led to content and recommendations to follow 'skinny binge' and 'apple core anorexic.'

Other memos show Facebook employees raising concerns about company research that revealed Instagram made 1-in-3 teen girls feel worse about their bodies and that teens who used the app felt higher rates of anxiety and depression.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What was it like when you saw those Facebook papers for the first time?

Kathleen Spence: Sickening. The fact that I was sitting there, struggling and hoping to save my daughter's life. And they had all these documents behind closed doors that they could've protected her. And they chose to ignore that research.

Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,200 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta.

Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.

Next year, Bergman and his team will start the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation.

Bergman spent 25 years as a product liability attorney specializing in absestos and mesothelioma cases. He argues the design of social media platforms is ultimately hurting kids.

Matt Bergman: They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive. They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is.

Sharyn Alfonsi: So the fact that these kids ended up seeing the things that they saw, that were so disturbing, wasn't by accident; it was by design?

Matt Bergman: Absolutely. This is not a coincidence.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Isn't it the parents' job to monitor this stuff?

Matt Bergman: Well, of course it is. I'm all for parental responsibility. But these products are explicitly designed to evade parental authority.

Sharyn Alfonsi: So what needs to be done?

Matt Bergman: Number one is age and identity verification. You know, that technology exists. You know, if people are trying to hook up on Tinder there's technology to make sure that the people are who they say they are. Number two would be turn off the algorithms. You know, there's no reason why Alexis Spence, who was interested in exercise, should have been directed toward anorexic content. Number three would be warnings so that parents know what's going on. Let's be realistic, you're never gonna have social media platforms be 100% safe. But, you know, these changes would make them safer.

Right now, the Roberts family says social media is not safe for kids. Englyn Roberts was the baby in a large family, the center of her parents Toney and Brandy's world.

Toney Roberts: She made every day...

Brandy Roberts: Special.

Toney Roberts: Every day felt like Christmas here.

But Englyn's life online told a different story. As the pandemic played out, Englyn wrote about struggles with self-worth, relationships and mental health.

One August night in 2020, just a few hours after Toney and Brandy kissed their 14-year-old smiling daughter goodnight, Brandy received a text from a parent of one of Englyn's friends who was worried about Englyn and suggested they check on her.

Toney Roberts: We went upstairs, and we checked, and her door was locked. That was kinda odd, so I took the key from the top and we opened the door and no Englyn. And when I turned around that's when I found her. When you find your child hanging, and you are in that moment in disbelief. It's just no way. Not our baby. Not our child. And then ultimately, I fault myself.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Why do you fault yourself?

Toney Roberts: Because I'm dad. I'm supposed to know.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Prior to that night you had no idea that she was depressed?

Toney Roberts: Not. Not even close.

Like the Spence family, Toney Roberts started connecting the dots after the Facebook papers came out and began digging through his daughter's phone for answers. He found an Instagram post sent to Englyn from a friend.

Toney Roberts: There was a video. And that video was a lady on Instagram pretending to hang herself, and that's ultimately what our child did. Cause, you ask yourself, how did she come up with this idea? And then when I did the research, there it was. She saw it on Instagram. It was on her phone.

Brandy Roberts: If that video wasn't sent to her, because she copied it, she wouldn't have had a way of knowing how to do that certain way of hanging yourself.

Nearly a year and a half after Englyn's death, that hanging video was still circulating on Instagram, with at least 1,500 views. Toney Roberts says it was taken down in December 2021. The Roberts are suing Meta, the parent company to Instagram.

Toney Roberts: If they so call monitor and do things, how could it stay on that site? Because part of their policies says they don't allow for self-harm photos, videos, things of that nature. So, who's holding them accountable?

Meta declined our request for an interview, but it's global head of safety gave us this statement - telling us, "we want teens to be safe online" and that Instagram doesn't "allow content promoting self-harm or eating disorders," and that Meta has improved Instagram's "age verification technology."

But when 60 Minutes ran this test two months ago, our colleague was able to lie about her age and sign up for Instagram as a 13-year-old with no verifications. We were also able to search for skinny and harmful content. And while a prompt came up asking if we wanted help, we instead clicked see posts and easily found content promoting anorexia and self harm -- showing more rigorous change is needed, a challenge the Spence and Roberts families are ready for.

Kathleen Spence: We're being gaslighted by the big tech companies that it's our fault. When really what we should be doing as parents is banding together and say, "No. You need to do better. I'm doing everything I can. You need to do better."

Brandy Roberts: We've lost, we've learned, but what's gonna stop these companies from continuing to let things happen if they don't change or be forced to make a change?

Toney Roberts: Social media is the silent killer for our children's generation. That's the conclusion I've come to. Why is everyone in power that can help change this, why is it not changing quick--enough? If our children are truly our future, what's the wait?
RESPONSES FROM META, SNAPCHAT, AND TIKTOK Statement from Meta "We want teens to be safe online. We've developed Statement from Snapchat Global Head of Platform Safety Jacqueline Beauchere
more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences. We automatically set teens' accounts to private when they join Instagram, and we send notifications encouraging them to take regular breaks. We don't allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99% of it before it's reported to us. We'll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues." - Antigone Davis, Vice President, Global Head of Safety, Meta Produced by Ashley Velie. Associate producers, Jennifer Dozor and Elizabeth Germino. Edited by April Wilson.
"The loss of a family member is devastating, and our hearts go out to people facing these tragedies, no matter the circumstances. We designed Snapchat to be different from traditional social media, built around visual messaging between real friends and avoiding the most toxic features that encourage social comparison and can take a toll on mental health. We know that friendships are a critical source of support for young people, especially when dealing with mental health challenges, and we continue to work with leading experts on in-app tools and resources to support our community - especially those who may be struggling."

TikTok only provided background information and declined to provide statement in response to our story.

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More than 1,200 families suing social media companies over kids' mental health

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CBS News When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook last fall, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note.

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In the fall of 2021, members of the U.S. Congress and hundreds of Western journalists obtained access to a collection of internal Facebook documents. The trove of research reports, proposals, presentations, and employee conversations would form the foundation for dozens of news stories describing Facebook's own awareness of the real-world harms that resulted from its relentless pursuit of its users' attention.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen-a former member of the Civic Integrity team at the company now called Meta-shared the cache of more than 1,300 documents that would come to be known collectively as the Facebook Papers. She would go on to testify before Congress as to their implications. Lawmakers would grill Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri about them as well.

In November 2021, Gizmodo with a group of independent experts to review, redact, and publish the Facebook Papers. This committee serves to advise and monitor our work and facilitate the responsible disclosure of the greatest number of documents in the public interest possible. We believe in the value of open access to these materials. Our collective goal is to minimize any potential harms that could result from the disclosure of certain methods by which Meta tackles sensitive issues like sex trafficking, disinformation, and voter manipulation. The documents, which have not previously been published, additionally contain both personal and private details about low-level Facebook employees and many of the users included in the company's studies and internal discussions. The risks associated with publishing this information outweighs the value of disclosure.

That review committee includes Laura Edelson, PhD candidate in computer science at New York University; Damon McCoy, associate professor in computer science and engineering at NYU; Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology division; Pri Bengani, senior research fellow at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism; Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and Michael Zimmer, associate professor in computer science at Marquette University.

This page will serve as a table of contents organizing every document Gizmodo has published to date along with a record of when we published them. We have categorized the documents by topic, redacted and reviewed them multiple times, and released them in batches. Additional documents, which require greater scrutiny for privacy or security reasons, will be added in the future.

Papers About the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

Papers Describing the Election-Related Task Force Monitoring "Complex Financial Organizations"

Papers Describing Election-Related Pages, Posts, Etc.

Internal Election-Related Research

Internal Election-Related Proposals

Internal Election-Related Explainers

Election-Related Platform and Product Updates

Miscellaneous Papers

Ranking-Related Explainers

Ranking-Related Platform and Product Updates

Ranking-Related Proposals

Papers Discussing "Demotions" in Feeds

Papers Discussing "Meaningful Social Interactions" (MSI)

Miscellaneous Papers

Climate Change Documents

Changelog:

May 2, 2022: Thirty-seven documents relating to the Facebook's ranking practices were published.

April 18, 2022: Twenty-eight documents relating to the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump, and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were published.

October 18, 2022: Two documents related to the 2020 elections, two documents related to rankings, 14 documents related to the News Feed, and 16 documents related to climate change were published.
Check back for updates.

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attack mission control post jan 6th ipoc

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In the fall of 2021, members of the U.S. Congress and hundreds of Western journalists obtained access to a collection of internal Facebook documents. The trove of research reports, proposals, presentations, and employee conversations would form the foundation for dozens of news stories describing Facebook's own awareness of the real-world harms that resulted from its relentless pursuit of its users' attention.

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When Twitter's former security chief testifies before a Senate committee on Tuesday, he will be the second highly-placed tech worker in less than a year to warn federal lawmakers about the struggles inside a social media platform.

The timing highlights both the public scrutiny on social media companies lately and Twitter's own delicate position.

Peiter Zatko's federal whistleblower complaint landed in the middle of a high-stakes legal drama in which Twitter is attempting to compel Tesla CEO Elon Musk to make good on a $44 billion deal to buy the struggling company.

Zatko, who's also known by his hacker name, Mudge, accused Twitter of lax security practices, failing to protect user privacy, misleading regulators in violation of a 2011 settlement, and knowingly employing foreign government agents and giving them access to sensitive systems and data.

Twitter has pushed back on the claims, saying Zatko was fired for poor performance and is "opportunistically seeking to inflict harm."

This push and pull is familiar to Frances Haugen, who publicly called out her former employer, Facebook, at a similar hearing about a year ago.

Zatko is "helping to shine light on the fact that critical pieces of communication infrastructure - Twitter, Facebook, TikTok - are being held together with duct tape and string," she said. "He took a huge personal risk and definitely a large career risk by coming forward with this information."

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled the hearing for 10am Tuesday. Three hours later, Twitter shareholders are scheduled to vote on whether to move forward with the merger agreement that Musk wants to dissolve. The company says it remains committed to closing the deal on the original terms.

Frances Haugen: people should be 'shocked' by weak security systems

Almost a year ago, Frances Haugen testified before Congress about Facebook. Looking back, she said it was a critical moment in her journey from tech worker to whistleblower to activist.

Haugen says the public assumes that Silicon Valley companies have deep pockets to maintain security. But Zatko paints a different picture, claiming that if a data center went down, Twitter might not be able to turn itself back on.

"That is a symptom of a level of underinvestment that the public should be shocked by. We take for granted that private corporations are running critical pieces of communication infrastructure," she said. "We need to have public accountability and transparency on how these systems work, because I guarantee you there are more skeletons in the closet than just what we're seeing at Twitter."

She says social media companies tend to prioritize growth. Stronger security or better protection of users' data doesn't lead to greater audiences.

"Critical parts of public safety are cost centers," she said. "If it's not essential to the bottom line, companies will never adequately invest in it. And unfortunately, that means that comes at the cost of public safety."

Investing in security infrastructure and staff is also costly. Twitter has struggled financially for years, yet the platform is deeply ingrained in public life.

It has an "outsized influence. That's why [Zatko] went to work there," said Margaret O'Mara, who studies the history of technology at the University of Washington. "Its founders never imagined it would have such political and newsmaking significance that it has now."

Facebook whistleblower: Zatko must gain the public's trust

Unlike Haugen a year ago, Zatko is somewhat familiar with Congress and the ways of Washington.

Back in 1998, when most people surfed the internet with Netscape or Mosaic, Zatko told a congressional committee that hackers could be an asset to the feds. He famously bragged that he could break the Internet in 30 minutes.

Zatko's career evolved and matured along with the commercial Internet. He worked for DARPA, the Defense Department's secretive deep-research unit, and founded a consulting firm before being hired by Twitter in November 2020 to shore up its security after young hackers commandeered dozens of high-profile accounts, including that of Elon Musk.

"Of the other senior people I have known who have gone to work at Twitter in security, a huge fraction of them go because they really care about public safety," Haugen said, adding that many other tech companies pay more. "You go there because you see Twitter is a critical piece of global communications infrastructure and you want to give back."

But Zatko says that when he raised concerns about security at Twitter, top executives, including the new CEO, Parag Agrawal, ignored them.

Haugen says she never intended to come forward with her criticism of Facebook. She thought the trove of internal documents she had gathered and leaked to The Wall Street Journal would stand on its own. But when she did testify, "the public got to put a face to my name," Haugen said. "Whether [Zatko's] disclosures have impact will be dependent on the public trusting him."

Unlike Haugen, Zatko has presented far fewer internal documents so far to support his allegations. And given the timing-in the midst of a legal battle between Twitter and Musk-people may be more skeptical of his motives.

Rebekah Tromble, who researches social media at George Washington University, says the public and policymakers have to rely on people like Zatko and Haugen to shine a light on social media companies, which she describes as "black boxes."

"We particularly lack transparency about the overall impact that they have on their users. So right now, we're in a place where we rely heavily on these individual whistle whistleblowers for a peek inside the black box. And that's really problematic."

What to watch for at the hearing and beyond

Nu Wexler, a communications consultant who previously worked for tech companies, including Twitter, and on Capitol Hill, expects senators to ask about the two Indian government agents allegedly hired at Twitter and how Twitter protects sensitive information about U.S. citizens.

But he's doubtful that lawmakers are truly motivated to act.

"We have seen time and time again, no matter who the whistleblower, no matter what the particular controversy, our representatives are up in arms for a while, propose a number of pieces of legislation, and yet not much has yet come of it," he said. "Maybe in this case, we'll see more, because there are foreign intelligence and security questions involved."

Yet he is skeptical that there will be much substance to the hearing.

"The hearing will devolve into a political food fight about bias and censorship, like every other congressional hearing does," Wexler said. Because of free speech issues, "Congress is limited in what they can actually do about online content. And so they sort of stall out, which wouldn't be a bad outcome for Twitter here."

Zatko filed his complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department. The SEC is already questioning Twitter on how it counts fake or bot accounts on its platform.

The FTC is likely to take action too, said Tromble.

"We're seeing, even just in the last few months, really strong signals from the FTC that they are ready, willing and able to step into the void to take a much firmer stance with the social media companies." she said.

The FTC has already fined Twitter $150 million for misusing user email addresses and phone numbers for marketing purposes in violation of its 2011 consent decree.

Tromble says senators and their staff are now better versed on tech policy and industry challenges. She expects sophisticated and nuanced questions from senators.

"I think we can expect more intelligent, thoughtful questions than we've seen in some of the hearings that took place maybe three, four or five years ago when [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and [then-Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey could say just about anything and it was taken at face value," said Tromble, whose research has been funded by Twitter in the past.

Twitter's lawsuit against Elon Musk casts a shadow over the Senate hearing

Meanwhile, the lawsuit that Twitter brought against the world's richest person is speeding toward an October 17th trial date.

Musk seized upon Zatko's allegations to bolster his defense, which had previously focused on how Twitter counts false accounts on the platform. (Many experts in corporate law say that is a flabby argument.)

Last week, Delaware Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick allowed Musk to amend his countersuit to include Zatko's allegations.

If you're waiting for juicy details about Twitter's inner workings, "the Musk case is far more important than the Senate hearing," Wexler said. "That's the main event."

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Here's why the Twitter whistleblower's testimony to Congress will be crucial

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When Twitter's former security chief testifies before a Senate committee on Tuesday, he will be the second highly-placed tech worker in less than a year to warn federal lawmakers about the struggles inside a social media platform. The timing highlights both the public scrutiny on social media companies lately and Twitter's own delicate position.