Connect with us

Published

on

Facebook’s chief executive has denied claims that the company prioritises profit over the safety of its users.

Mark Zuckerberg was responding to Frances Haugen’s claims that, left alone, Facebook would “continue to make choices that go against the common good – our common good”.

Ms Haugen – a former product manager at the tech giant – gave evidence to US politicians in the Senate on Tuesday, days after leaking internal company documents to The Wall Street Journal.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

‘Facebook buys its profits with our safety’

Mr Zuckerberg wrote in a blog on Tuesday night that the testimony “just doesn’t reflect the company we know”, adding: “We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health.

“It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives.”

Documents leaked by Ms Haugen included an internal study that suggested Instagram generated peer pressure, leading to mental health and body image problems among young girls, including eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.

More on Facebook

In one report, 13.5% of teenage girls said Instagram increased suicidal thoughts, and 17% said it made eating disorders worse.

During her testimony, Ms Haugen accused Facebook of “hiding its research from public scrutiny”, meaning it was “unaccountable”.

She added: “When we realised Big Tobacco was hiding the harms, that caused the government to take action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action.

“And when our government learned that opioids were taking lives, the government took action.”

The whistleblower had revealed her identity in an interview with the 60 Minutes programme on CBS, where she claimed Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to combat misinformation that contributed to the US Capitol attack.

She said the changes made to algorithms contributed to more divisiveness, but that Facebook discovered they helped keep people coming back, helping the tech giant sell more digital ads – the lion’s share of its revenue.

Mr Zuckerberg responded: “We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don’t want their ads next to harmful or angry content.

“And I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed.

“The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction.”

FILE - This Jan. 17, 2017, file photo shows a Facebook logo displayed in a start-up companies gathering at Paris' Station F in Paris. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will meet Friday May 10, 2019 French President Emmanuel Macron as the tech giant and France try to pioneer ways of fighting hate speech and violent extremism online. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
Image:
Facebook also owns WhatsApp and Instagram

Mr Zuckerberg said that many of Ms Haugen’s claims “don’t make any sense”.

He added: “If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we’re doing?

“And if social media were as responsible for polarising society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarisation increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?

“At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritise profit over safety and well-being. That’s just not true.”

After Ms Haugen’s testimony, some senators personally extended an invitation for Mr Zuckerberg to testify in front of the committee, while others accused him of going sailing instead of facing his responsibilities.

Her testimony came after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffered an unprecedented outage for almost six hours on Monday – leaving its 3.5 billion users unable to access services.

Continue Reading

US

Mandelson to praise Trump as maverick ‘risk taker’ and paint Brexit as liberating force

Published

on

By

Mandelson to praise Trump as maverick 'risk taker' and paint Brexit as liberating force

Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.

Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.

In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.

Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.

And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.

He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…

“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”

Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.

Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Farage likens UK to North Korea in Congress

Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.

His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.

Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.

And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’

The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.

Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.

As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.

Lord Mandelson's speech comes a week before Mr Trump's UK state visit. Pic: AP
Image:
Lord Mandelson’s speech comes a week before Mr Trump’s UK state visit. Pic: AP

He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”

At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?

Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?

“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.

Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.

He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.

A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.

“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”

Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
Image:
Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters

Read more from Sky News:
Trump rebrands Pentagon as the Department of War
The proxy war that will redefine US public health

And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.

“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.

“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”

The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.

Follow the World
Follow the World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.

With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.

Continue Reading

US

Joe Biden has skin cancer surgery – months after ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer diagnosis

Published

on

By

Joe Biden has skin cancer surgery - months after 'aggressive' prostate cancer diagnosis

Former US president Joe Biden has had surgery for skin cancer, his spokesperson has said.

It’s unclear when he had the procedure, but video from late August showed him leaving church in Delaware with a large, fresh scar on his head.

The spokesperson told Sky’s US partner, NBC News, that he was recovering well.

Mr Biden had Mohs surgery, which involves removing a layer of tissue, examining it under a microscope to see if any cancer cells remain, and repeating if necessary.

The 82-year had a basal cell carcinoma, one of the two most common skin cancer types, removed from his chest in 2023.

His doctor said at the time that all the cancerous cells had been removed.

The same year, Mr Biden’s wife, Jill, had two basal cell carcinomas removed from near her eye and on her chest.

The former president also revealed this May that he had stage-four prostate cancer – with the disease having spread to his bones and having a Gleason score of nine.

Such a score means the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.

Follow the World
Follow the World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

Read more from Sky News:
Trump to rebrand Pentagon as ‘Department of War’
The proxy war that will redefine US public health

His office said the prostate cancer was discovered when Mr Biden visited a doctor for urinary symptoms and that he was considering “multiple treatment options”.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” said a statement.

Continue Reading

US

475 people detained during immigration raid on Hyundai factory in Georgia

Published

on

By

475 people detained during immigration raid on Hyundai factory in Georgia

Officers detained 475 people during an immigration raid on a Hyundai factory for electric vehicles in Georgia.

The majority of those detained at the 3,000-acre site west of Savannah are from South Korea, according to Steven Schrank, special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations.

Mr Schrank said the raid was the “largest single-site enforcement operation” in the history of the agency and followed an investigation of several months, which involved leads from community members and former workers.

The spokesman for the South Korean foreign ministry, Lee Jaewoong, said there was a “large” number of South Koreans among those detained in the raid, but did not provide an exact number.

A 'large' number of those detained were from South Korea
Image:
A ‘large’ number of those detained were from South Korea

He said the detained workers were part of a “network of subcontractors” and that the employees worked for several different companies on the Georgia site.

Mr Lee said South Korea’s foreign ministry is dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and plans to form an on-site response team centred on the local mission.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of US law enforcement,” Mr Lee added.

More on Georgia, Us

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes”.

The manufacturing site, which employs about 1,200 people, has been hailed as the largest economic development project in the state’s history by Governor Brian Kemp and other officials.

The Hyundai Motor Group plant in Georgia. File pic: AP Photo/Mike Stewart
Image:
The Hyundai Motor Group plant in Georgia. File pic: AP Photo/Mike Stewart

Hyundai Motor Group, the biggest automaker in South Korea, started manufacturing electric vehicles at the $7.6bn (£7.4bn) site a year ago and partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, which is set to open in 2026.

ICE spokesman Lindsay Williams confirmed the raid and said agents were focused on the construction site for the battery plant.

LG said in a statement that it was “closely monitoring the situation and gathered all relevant details”. The firm said it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.

“Our top priority is always ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and partners. We will fully cooperate with the relevant authorities,” LG said.

Hyundai and LG’s battery joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, said in a statement that it’s “cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities” and paused construction of the battery site to assist the investigation.

Operations at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing plant weren’t interrupted, plant spokesperson Biance Johnson said.

Read more from Sky News:
Trump to rebrand Pentagon as Department of War
Former President Biden has skin cancer surgery

The raid is the latest in a series of sweeping ICE operations as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which saw immigration officers raid farms, construction sites, restaurants and auto repair shops.

The US labour force lost more than 1.2 million immigrants from January through July, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Research Centre, citing preliminary census data.

Continue Reading

Trending