Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen has been lauded as a "whistleblower" for leaking internal documents to the government and the media in support of her call to regulate Facebook on the grounds of her allegation that the company knowingly encourages "addiction" to its product and the spread of misinformation. Join Elan Journo and Ben Bayer to analyze the allegations and the philosophic assumptions behind this latest call to regulate social media.

Among the topics covered:

• Background on the recent attacks on Facebook;
• The essence of Frances Haugen’s regulatory “oversight” proposal and its deterministic assumptions;
• The cultural prejudice revealed by the gleeful embrace of the whistleblower’s claims;
• The nonobjectivity of Haugen’s claim that Instagram causes mental health problems in children;
• Why it’s unwarranted to say that users are “addicted” to Instagram;
• The brazen distortion of the statistics about suicidal thoughts among Instagram users;
• How Haugen’s proposal ignores obvious factors behind the uptick in teenage anxiety and depression;
• The overt paternalism of the call to regulate Facebook and how it ignores people’s ability to make choices;
• The sweeping determinism implied by Haugen’s view of how Facebook spreads misinformation;
• The motivation behind Haugen’s call to regulate Facebook;
• Why the hearing with Haugen was held.

Full article available here