Facebook must be blocked

There is a simple paired lesson in the outage that shut down Facebook for hours on Monday, and the whistleblower congressional testimony Tuesday about all the ways Facebook is harming users:

Facebook has become a problem, on or off.

That’s a measure of its great power from Mineola to Myanmar, and the reason more federal oversight is needed.

The outage, in an accidental but jarring way, reminded us of Facebook’s size and importance. The consequences went far beyond losing the ability to tap photos and scroll. Many U.S. companies rely on Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms to contact and retain customers. People in other countries count on WhatsApp to communicate, and in some places Facebook itself is essentially the internet. It has grown too powerful, reaching into our personal lives, shaping our culture and reordering our political discourse.

It is a tool, but one that can poison. That was the message in disturbing revelations from Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, whose leaked documents and testimony to the Senate's consumer protection subcommittee exposed Facebook's awareness that its algorithms can cause harm.

The evidence is damning. Some of the worst examples show that when teen girls felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, according to internal documents reported on by The Wall Street Journal, then they use Instagram more.

Overall, company researchers noted that even after algorithm changes, "Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares."

The detail is new but the concern is not. For years, Facebook has been a haven for illogic, illegal behavior, election meddling and bullying, despite all its benefits of connection.

In some ways, Facebook’s products are more dangerous than those of other social media companies: When it comes to questions of teenagers’ self-image, Snapchat’s augmented reality and TikTok’s focus on fun scenes with friends are distinct from Instagram’s relentless shots about lifestyles and bodies, as Haugen suggested Tuesday.

Many tech giants share similar problems of scale and overreach into private lives. For most, their business model is to manipulate the information we receive. As with all new forms of mass communications, Washington is slow to respond but eventually finds the will to bring an industry under control. The time is now.

These efforts should include enforcement of antitrust laws to limit the size of companies and new laws to make them more responsible for restricting malicious and false content. They must also bear some responsibility for criminal activity conducted on their platforms. Other crucial areas raised by Haugen and lawmakers include higher age limits for social media use, technical and algorithmic changes to slow the spread of content, and ways to avoid prioritizing inflammatory material. How companies do this must be disclosed to regulators.

Facebook knows what the problems are. Now it must be held responsible for failing to fix them.