Democratic Senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal said that the FTC is checking whether the company has hidden information from her from internal research.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) examines internal company documents submitted by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen for violations of American law. The Wall Street Journal reported this on Wednesday.
We are talking about the 2019 agreement on the settlement of claims by the state body in connection with problems related to the confidentiality of users’ personal data. The company then paid a record $5 billion in fines; the newspaper points out. The FTC is the critical state regulator of business on the Internet and monitors the integrity of the competition.
Internal documents of the social network leaked to the media show that its algorithms contributed to disagreement in society. The Instagram application owned by the company had a negative impact on users’ psyche, especially girls, the newspaper writes. Against this background, American congressmen and human rights activists called on the commission to give its assessment of Facebook’s actions, whether it misled users and the government.
Democratic Senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal said that the FTC is checking whether the company has hidden information from her from internal research. Former Federal Commission chief William Kovacic believes that the authorities are also likely to examine whether Facebook was legally obliged to warn users about possible risks identified during internal research. In his opinion, this circumstance can be classified as unfair competition.
According to the newspaper’s source, the FTC maintains contacts with representatives of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who handed over internal documents of the platform to the media and authorities. At the moment, the commission is headed by Lina Khan, a staunch critic of large technology corporations, The Wall Street Journal notes.
The social network itself previously indicated that the documents submitted by Haugen create a distorted picture of the situation, and the company invested significant human and technological resources in maintaining the security of the platform.
