"We're here today because Facebook has shown us once again it is incapable of holding itself accountable," Senator Richard Blumenthal said at a Senate hearing on September 30 in which Facebook's global head of safety Antigone Davis was subject to a grueling two and half hours. "We now know while Facebook publicly denies that Instagram is deeply harmful for teens, privately, Facebook, researchers, and experts have been ringing the alarm for years," Blumenthal said referring to the damning revelations made by the Wall Street Journal over the last month. Among other things, WSJ reporting revealed how internal research conducted by Facebook showed that a large number of teenagers, particularly teenage girls, trace a significant amount of anxiety and mental health problems to Instagram. "IG stands for Instagram, but it also stands for Insta-greed," said Senator Edward Markey. Facebook has been publicly defending itself against the WSJ reports through blog posts, and as expected, Davis stuck to company lines and divulged very little new information at the hearing. But the questions and topics covered by the bipartisan group of senators shed light on how lawmakers are approaching recent revelations. Spoiler alert: they do not trust Facebook one bit to regulate itself. "Facebook has asked us to trust it. But after these evasions and these revelation, why should we? It's clear that Facebook has done nothing to earn that trust, not from us, not from parents, not from the public." - Blumenthal Here are some key takeaways from the hearing: Facebook will not commit to releasing…
