facebook whistle blower, frances haugen, tells mps that the platform puts growth over safety. the real thing we re seeing here is facebook accepting little, tiny additions of harm, like when they way off how much harm is worth how much growth for us? but facebook has told the bbc it has rules against harmful content, and has halved the amount of hate speech on its site. the prevalence of hate speech on facebook is less than a fifth of a percent. that s less than .05%. and that s a result of the progress we ve made in developing technology to find and remove that kind of content. a key spending pledge to help some of the world s poorest countries cut their carbon footprint has not been met, days before world leaders meet in glasgow for the cop26 climate summit. when s your birthday? may 5th, why? oh, i m just making a list of people s birthdays. 0h, mine s december. yeah, whatever. and tributes pour in for james michael tyler who starred as gunther in friends and has die
more than a third of the world s population are active users of facebook and its other social media products. no company in the world has such power and yet such little transparency. but things are changing. since friday, a consortium of news organizations in the united states has begun publishing a series of stories called the facebook papers the evidence comes from hundreds of internal company documents which have been sent to the securities and exchange commission and provided to congress, by facebook whistleblower frances haugen and her legal counsel. the evidence points directly at mark zuckerberg. time and again in these papers, company insiders say the facebook ceo chose profit over safety, compromising his own rules, with disastrous outcomes. today, ms haugen was here in the uk to give evidence to a parliamentary committee. she told them her former employer is unquestionably making hate worse . the algorithms take people who have very mainstream interests interes
This is bbc news. i m christian fraser. a former facebook employee tells british mps the social media giant is unquestionably making hate worse . frances haugen said the company s algorithms will fuel sporadic episodes of violent conflict, by spreading divisive content. anger and hate is the easiest way to grow on facebook. a shocking report from afghanistan. the bbc finds some parents so desperate for food, they re prepared to sell their children. and in the uk an increase in the national living wage will be included in the chancellor s budget announcement, wednesday. we ll look at what that means for workers and the employers.
To a parliamentary committee. she told them her former employer is unquestionably making hate worse . the algorithms take people who have very mainstream interests interests and they push them towards extreme interests. you can be someone center left and you will be pushed to radical left. you can be a center right and pushed to radical right. you can be looking for a healthy recipes, you ll get pushed to anorexia content. there are examples in facebook s research of all of this. one of the things that happens with groups and networks of groups is that people see echo chambers that create social norms, so if i m in a group that has lots of covid misinformation and i see over and over again that if someone encourages people to get vaccinated, they get completely pounced upon. they get torn apart. i learn that certain ideas are acceptable and unacceptable.
This is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. facebook whistleblower frances haugen has told british politicians that the social network is unquestionably making hate worse . new details emerge of the fatal shooting of a crew member on a film set. legal papers reveal alec baldwin was pointing a revolver at a camera during rehearsal when it fired. a warning on climate change the world is way off track in limiting rising temperatures says the un. and explosive allegations that the organisers of the january 6 storming of capitol hill had planning meetings with members of congress.