Looks like Facebook is on the road to redemption…
Last week, whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress about Facebook’s internal research report that indicated that Facebook has serious negative harm on a significant portion of teenagers and younger children and how their algorithms promote extremism and self-hate instead of removing it. In light of the allegations, it looks like Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president of global affairs has now announced new measures on Instagram to nudge teenagers away from harmful content on social media and instead, encourage them to “take a break” from the platform. This announcement was made on CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday at a very strategic time when Facebook is under fire for its privacy and account settings.
“We’re going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that a teenager is looking at the same content over and over again, and it’s content which may not be conducive to their well being, we will nudge them to look at other content,” Clegg said. He also said that the company plans to add a new feature called “take a break” which will prompt teens to just simply take a break from using Instagram. I’m sure that’s going to work out perfectly as teens have the best self-control (not).
You may be wondering, okay that’s a good start but when do these features roll out? Well, seems like Clegg forgot to mention a release date or timeline for any of the two features and a spokesperson for Facebook added that the features “are not testing yet but will soon” which is kind of similar to saying “We just announced these features to get positive feedback from the public but don’t get your hopes up for an actual feature like this anytime soon”