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.
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‘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.”
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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.
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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.”
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.
The men’s US Open final has been delayed by extra security measures as Donald Trump’s arrival was met by cheers and boos from fans at Flushing Meadows.
The match between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the world’s top two players, was pushed back by half an hour in New York on Sunday before Alcaraz won three sets to one.
The US president was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos from early arriving spectators when he waved from a suite at the Arthur Ashe Stadium about 45 minutes before the match began.
Image: Crowds waiting to enter the Arthur Ashe Stadium for the US Open men’s singles final. Pic: AP
Image: President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at the US Open tennis men’s singles final. Pic: AP
Increased security checks at entrances to the grounds and to get into the arena building prompted the US Tennis Association to move the start time to 2.30pm, local time, instead of 2pm.
Organisers said it was “to ensure that fans have additional time to get to their seats.”
A spokesperson for the US Tennis Association said it “was not a request made by the White House”.
Image: Carlos Alcaraz celebrates winning the US Open men’s singles title. Pic: Reuters
Image: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. Pic: AP
Despite the change, the 24,000-capacity arena was only about two-thirds full when the first point was played, while thousands of fans still were standing outside the court, waiting in line to enter.
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Mr Trump, who is the first sitting president to attend the tournament at Flushing Meadows since Bill Clinton in 2000, was booed again when he appeared for the National Anthem.
Standing up and saluting, the president was shown briefly on the arena’s big screens during the anthem, and offered a smirk that briefly made the boos louder.
Always a big celebrity draw, the final attracted, among others, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, former Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Hollywood stars Ben Stiller and Danny DeVito, director Spike Lee and basketball player Steph Curry.
Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants – by posting an AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.
There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.
That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.
The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Image: Pic: Truth Social
Mr Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Pentagon as the Department of War.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote in a post on X, responding to Mr Trump’s post.
“This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Mr Pritzker previously said that he believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend.
Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or cancelled over the threatened stings.
Image: A protest against threatened immigration raids in Chicago on Saturday. Pic: AP
A military deployment in Chicagohas long been reported. Last month, the Pentagon was said to be drafting plans to send the US Army to Illinois.
In a statement responding to that report, originally from The Washington Post, Mr Pritzker said the statehad “made no requests for federal intervention” and accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.
Vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday that there were “no immediate plans” to send the National Guard to Chicago.
It marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
The day after the raid, ICE posted a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus.
South Korean junior foreign minister Park Yoon-joo told a US government official in a phone call that the video release was regrettable.
Seoul’s foreign ministry added the post came “at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and cooperation” between the two countries, forged through their first summit, “must be maintained”.
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.
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3:49
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.
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?
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“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.”
Image: Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
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.
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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.