donie o'sullivan spoke to a former-google employee who worked on the youtube algorithm about how this> as long as possible because as long as [ inaudible ]. >> and that didn't matter if it was bs videos about vaccines, didn't matter if it was misinformation because all these people are watching videos? youtube announced this week that it would crack down more on vaccine misinformation. but almost two years into the pandemic, the news left many people asking what took them so long? >> reporter: the company saying it will now ban well-known false claims about approved vaccines including that they will cause autism, cancer, or infertility. or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. >> i'm sure you have seen the pictures all over the internet of people who've had these shots, and they're magnetized and put a key on their forehead, it sticks. >> that's anti-vax conspiracy theorist sherry tenpenny, who despite a history of making unhinged claims like that, was only recently suspended by youtube. >> this is not content without consequences. these -- these -- you know, t

cnn's donie o'sullivan reports. >> reporter: on january 6th, facebook executives condemned the attackemployees began to push back. facebook, they suggested was culpable. one writing in an internal facebook company chat, all due respect but haven't we had enough time to manage discourse without enabling violence. we've been fuelling this fire for a long time and we shouldn't be surprised it's now out of control. another wrote they were tired of the leadership. there were dozensen stop the steal groups. stop the steal, the conspiracy movement that helped fuel the insurrection had been on facebook for months. how did you guys hear about this event today? >> through facebook. >> reporter: facebook events instagram? how you have been promoting it? >> well, i created a facebook event for yesterday's event pipe posted after the fact that we will again be coming today. i will be again making another event with regards to tomorrow. >> facebook providing the fundamental coordinating structure. they were sharing ridesharing information. they were sharing resources. they were talking about what t

cnn's donie o'sullivan has been all over the story. donie, you've been listening closely to the testimony, the hearing. we heard a pretty disturbing account of the social media giant that apparently is willing to grow the all costs. >> reporter: yeah, frances haugen, the facebook whistle-blower is proving to be an incredibly powerful witness. she's a tech insider, but she's able to speak and explain these, you know, rather complicated algorithms and how these systems work in a way that normal people can understand. have a listen. >> facebook understands that if they want to continue to grow, they have to find the users. they have to make sure that the next generation is just as engaged with instagram as the current one. and the way they'll do that is by making sure that children establish habits before they have good self-regulation. >> by hooking kids? >> by hooking kids. i'd like to emphasize one of the documents we sent in on problematic use examines the rates of problematic use by age, that peaked to 14 year olds. it's just like cig

. >> with me now to share the reporting and insight cnn's donie o'sullivan and jennifer heigl from syracuseniversity. donie, what jumped out on capitol hill as the most important testimony as members of this committee and congress try to debate what should we do about it? >> reporter: it's all about the kids, you know. this is what i think is so compelling and what is so emotive, and why we're seeing some talk of bipartisanship here on the committee, that it is about protecting the most vulnerable people in our society. children. and that is what this whistle-blower frances haugen who, frankly, is a nightmare for facebook right now. he's articulate, compelling and speaking like a normal person. oftentimes, tech executives come up here, they sound like robots when they're explaining these things. she is laying it all out very, very clearly. and look, this is something that a lot of us know to be true. right? so many of us can relate to having people in our lives who have become addicted to social media. who has been harassed by social media. who have gone down rabbit holes of misinformation

cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan and capitol hill reporter melanie zanona are here with more. you've been covering this very closely here. mark zuckerberg pushing back, defensive tone, this during an earnings call. i wonder what do these say and is it your view having covered this for so long that facebook considers what it is going through now different from previous bouts with bad press? >> yeah. i mean, they certainly have given up kind of engaging on the issues. we have seen over the past week a facebook spokesperson telling the washington post that some reporting was beneath them and yesterday we saw zuckerberg having a pop at the media. have a listen to him on that earnings call. >> good faith criticism helps us get better. but my view is that what we're seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company. the reality is that we have an open culture, where we encourage discussion and research, about our work, so we can make progress on many complex issues that are not specific to just us. >> and when he talks there a

cnn's donie o'sullivan starts us off this morning. >> reporter: we need to steel ourselves from more bad headlines in the coming days, facebook wrote in an internal memo to colleagues over the weekend. >> we didn't invent hate, but you think it's making hate worse? >> unquestionably it's making hate worse. >> reporter: whistleblower frances haugen appeared before the parliament and cnn and other news agencies began producing thousands of pages haugen leaked from the company. >> i think there is a view in the company it's a cost center, not growth center. it's short term in thinking. >> reporter: what fueled the insurrection was piecemeal. >> how did you hear about it today? >> from facebook. >> reporter: after the insurrection comments suggested the company was at least partially culpable. all due respect, but haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourt without enabling violence? we've been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn't be surprised it's now out of control. but facebook's issues extend far beyond the united states. the leaked document showed t

cnn's donie o'sullivan joins me. one of facebook's high-profile failures was the stop the steal rally which ultimately became, of course, the deadly january 6th insurrection. >> that's right, jake. and we are learning from the documents that there are so many missed signals, really missed warnings when it came to the stop the steal movement. we could all see in those months last november, last december that this was getting violent. there was a lot of overlap with violent movements. but facebook acted too late. have a watch. >> facebook didn't invent hate but it's making hate worse? >> unquestionably. >> reporter: facebook mobiler frances haugen testifying they'll keep fueling violence around the world if changes are not made. she photographed thousands of internal company documents before leaving the tech giant in may. >> what frances has given us is an extraordinary archive of material that helps us see exactly what's going on and what they know is going on. and it is the biggest and most important contribution to

cnn's donie o'sullivan has the report. >> reporter: on january 6th, facebook executives condemned theally, some employees began to push back. facebook, they suggested, was culpable. one writing in internal facebook company chat, all due respect, but haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence? we have been fueling this fire for a long time and shouldn't be surprised it's now out of control. another wrote they were tired of thoughts and prayers from facebook leadership. there were dozens of stop the steal groups active up until yesterday another facebook employee responded. stop the steal, the conspiracy theory movement that helped fuel the insurrection, had been organizing on facebook for months. >> how did you guys hear about this event today? >> through facebook. >> facebook events, instagram. how have you been promoting this? >> well, i created a facebook event for yesterday's event. and i posted after the fact that we were, again, coming today. i will be, again, making another event in regards to tomorrow. >> facebook provided the fun

cnn's donie o'sullivan joins us now. this coming off the heels of more than a 5% drop in facebook stock. this facebook whistleblower coming forward with allegations the company has put profit over its users. what are you learning about these outannoutannals -- outage? >> challenging day for facebook. facebook not saying what is the cause of the outage. all they're saying is we are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. they're working to get things back to normal. i think they may be underestimating it when they say some people. it is clear from speaking to folks, both my family back in ireland and people all across the u.s. here, they're unable to access facebook, zbinstagram, a what's app at the moment. we see these services go down occa occasionally, but normally sometimes for a few minutes. i think we're going into about an hour now since we were first hearing reports of this outage. there isn't a site that tracks online websites that go out, but down detecter, people can report wh

cnn's donie o'sullivan reports. >> reporter: tiktok, snapchat and youtube on the hot seats in capitoll. >> why do you need all of this personal data, especially on our children? >> reporter: the platforms questioned about how kids use social media, how they are affected by and what the companies do to protect teens and children. >> they cannot trust these apps with their children. >> reporter: it's the first time tiktok has been called before congress. they were grilled about the apps. >> i'm sure the porn stars were accurate and fact checked. the tips on why you shouldn't go to bars alone are accurate and fact checked. but that's not my question. this is about whether it's appropriate for children ages 13 and up as you certified. >> absolutely. and senator, i think this is an area where we are constantly evolving. if there are instances where these publishers are surfacing content to an age cohort this is that is inappropriate, they will be removed. >> reporter: one big message, we're not facebook. >> snapchat is different. snapchat was build as an antidote to social media. >> our le

cnn's donie o'sullivan has more now. >> it was very frustrating for me.started losing sleep because, i mean, i should not have been put in this position, and frankly i was the wrong person for this position. i am not charismatic. i am not good at attracting or receiving attention. i'm an introvert who wants to stay at home and pet my cats. >> reporter: repressive governments around the world using facebook to achieve influence and control. >> if anyone is an expert on public relations, on what is effective for driving attention, it is dictators of those countries. the fact that multiple national governments and presidents felt the need to exploit facebook on mass scales, to manipulate their own citizenry without even trying to hide, that speaks volumes about how important they believed it to be, how important it actually is. >> reporter: some of her findings led to facebook cracking down on accounts in azerbaijan and honduras, but she says facebook is too slow to act against abuse of its platform, particularly in smaller or developing countries. when it f

at the world series, i'm donie o'sullivan in atlanta. >> so you're wondering as for the actual game, now just one win away from the first world series championship since 1995. they came from behind to edge the houston astros 3-2 and take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series. braves grab the lead in the seventh inning with back-to-back home runs with swanson and solera. the braves hope to win the fall classic at home. the game is in atlanta here tonight. >>> a dazzling light show this weekend in parts of the world. and all people have to do is look up. the northern lights are on display across parts of europe and north america, including u.s. states as far south as illinois and oregon. one viewer tweeted you won't believe the scene here, unreal. keep an eye out for that. i'm kim brunhuber. thank you for watching. stay with cnn, our special coverage continues with "new day" next. how did olay top expensive creams? like this with hydration that beats the $100 cream in every jar of regenerist retinol24 collagen peptide new vitamin c and the iconic red jar can't top this skin shop now at o

donie o'sullivan is outfront on capitol hill to begin our coverage tonight. and, donie, facebook just coming back online after a very troubling day for the company. i mean, six hours out was stunning, on its own. never mind, against the backdrop of this incredible moment. >> that's right, erin. and you talk about power. today was a reminder of facebook's power. that platform, that company controlling three of the world's biggest social-media platforms. facebook, instagram, and whatsapp. we are learning now that the -- the services are slowly coming back online. this was very unusual, by the way. facebook was out -- out for almost six hours today which basically never happens. um, why that all happened? we don't know, yet. it sounds like the company is still trying to figure that out. but as one headache ends today for facebook, a new one begins tomorrow here behind me in capitol hill when a whistle-blower will testify about all of the company's ills. about their corrosive impact on democracy, and a key component of this whistle-blower's allegations is about t

donie o'sullivan, thank you very much. come back when you have more developments. >>> more on the revelations from the former facebook employee. she is accusing facebook of hiding internal research that proves its platforms are used to spread hate, violence and misinformation. >> haugen has filed eight complaints with the federal securities and exchange commission, and now she's revealing tens of thousands of documents that she says shows facebook intentionally tweaked its algorithm to allow this toxic content to spread in order to make more money. >> there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for facebook, and facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, including making their own money. the version of facebook that exists today is tearing our country apart and causing ethnic violence around the world. >> with us cnn legal and national security analyst, a former fbi special agent, and mona host of the run, let me start with you, because you have made th

donie o'sullivan, appreciate it. joining us now scott galloway, professor of marketing at nyu stern school of business. scott, i am wondering what jumps out at you from these papers. i mean, they really seem to show time and time again, facebook knowingly put profit before public safety. >> yeah. it's sort of more from individuals to really more their business model. and the structure of the business and the culture that you have a company that knowingly has let algorithms kind of run unfettered to elevate content, distinct the fact that it might result in insurrection, might result in human trafficking, might result in much lower vaccination rates. and kind of this delay and obfuscation and hide the ball, such that they can continue to engage in this kind of massive profitability that that type of unfortunate elevation of oftentimes misinformation results in. i mean, this really is a bombshell report here. >> do you think there is -- i mean, whether it comes from outside or inside, do you think they are, from inside

donie o'sullivan, thank you so much. >>> up next, meet the top ten cnn heroes of 2021.screen saver. (man 2) yeah, but we need to go higher. (man 1) higher. (man 2) definitely higher. (man 1) we're like yodeling high. [yodeling] yo-de-le-he... (man 2) hey, no. uh-uh, don't do that. (man 1) we should go even higher! (man 2) yeah, let's do it. (both) woah! (man 2) i'm good. (man 1) me, too. (man 2) mm-hm. (vo) adventure has a new look. (man 1) let's go lower. (man 2) lower, that sounds good. (vo) discover more in the all-new subaru outback wilderness. love. it's what makes subaru, subaru. >>> here at cnn we're proud to salute our cnn heroes who make the world a better and safer place. here's anderson with the top ten cnn heroes of 2021. >> from philadelphia, a pediatric surgeon who saw covid-19 ravaging communities of color. she built trust and brought testing and vaccinations to more than 75,000 people. from san francisco, a man building understanding and confidence using his journey with adhd and dyslexia to help kids with learning differences thrive. this man helps form

. >> cnn's donie o'sullivan joins us live from capitol hill. so i mean, she just put to words what many people have been fearing for years about the algorithm of facebook, that it does much more harm than good, so where are we and what can lawmakers actually do? >> reporter: well, lawmakers can legislate to regulate and there's certainly a lot of indication from senators on both sides of the aisle who were at that hearing today that they would be willing to do that, that this seems like a bipartisan issue, and a lot of it is due to how compelling this whistleblower's testimony was. have a listen. >> facebook knows that it's amplification algorithms, like engagement based ranking on instagram can lead children from innocuous topics like healthy recipe, i think all of us could eat a little more healthy, all the way from something like healthy recipes to anorexia promoted content. the bullying follows them home. it follows them into their bedrooms. the last thing they see before they go to bed is someone being cruel or the first thing they see in

. >>> i want to turn out to the controversy over facebook with cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan and legal and national security analyst r. donie, testifying before congress tomorrow, you've been going through her prepared testimony. what can we expect? >> yeah, don, she says very clearly that she knows that a trillion dollar company like facebook, she says in her words could destroy her. they could try and totally discredit all the accusations that she is leveling against them. but what chevrolets out i think quite eloquently in their opening statement, which we'll hear tomorrow morning is really this idea that the idea that facebook is putting out to the world, that to have a platform where you upload photos and where you share stories and stay in touch with your family, that you have that platform for free, that you have to also, you know, possibly be exposed to misinformation and hate and everything else that we know son facebook and instagram. and she is making the point pretty clearly that that doesn't have to be the case, that facebook is making choices here, and the choice sh

donie o'sullivan has more. >> reporter: facebook found itself on thursday trying to downplay and discredit own research on how its platforms, including instagram, affect teenagers. have a listen. >> facebook is just like big tobacco, pushing a product that they know is harmful to the health of young people. >> i want to be clear that this research is not a bombshell. it's not causal research. it's, in fact, just -- >> i beg to differ with you. this research is a bombshell. it is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children, and it has concealed those facts and findings. >> and senator blumenthal said they set up an account as a 13-year-old girl. his staff use that account to follow some extreme dieting pages that are on instagram, and within a day, instagram's own algorithms, its own engines were recommending to that account that it follow accounts that were promoting self-harm. so really an experiment there showing really just how dangerous this platform can be for teenagers and for young people. now, we know about all of this re

. >> joining us now to talk more about this is cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan. she is taking about changing the settings. the algorithm. they changed the unit, civic integrity, designed to try to consult this assault on democracy. this algorithm, this boogeyman really is a boogeyman. >> unfortunately what i think is her reason for coming forward, which is she lost somebody close to her of a rabbit hole of misinformation. that is a story we hear play out again and again and again in the united states, loved ones going down the rabbit holes, leading them to not get the vaccine. but essentially what she is saying is sort of what folks, experts have been saying for a long time about fundamentally the facebook algorithm is designed to keep people on the platform longer so facebook can make more money. the best way to do that is to feed them the sort of junk, the extreme content that will keep them there. >> because that is what's good for facebook's bottom line, even if it's bad for america or the world, as she puts it. she's painting this picture where a safety mech

investors, mark zuckerberg downplayed the thousands of pages of leaked internal documents, and now donie o'sullivanari sellers, hello to both of you, and the internal facebook documents and what we are hearing from the facebook whistleblower, frances haugen, paints a disturbing picture of how they repeatedly stop the spread of extremism, including the stuff still movement, how much did facebook know about what was going on here? >> well, i think it's pretty clear that they knew a lot, right, the experiment that you spoke about were they set up this account of the north carolina mom, 41 years old, she starts off by liking donald trump, of melania trump and foxnews, and after a few weeks, facebook is recommending facebook, recommending that she follow qanon pages. >> that's what i said yes. >> follows the 3% pages, this is experience we are familiar with right, and i think that is really what demonstrates all of this, mark zuckerberg can say whatever he wants, i will say i think he's doing some more and more like trump in that rather than engaging in substance he's attacking the media and everybody s

let's bring in donie o'sullivan, part of the cnn team that reported this story and technology reporterfacebook is saying one thing in public and then, like the facebook papers have shown us time and again, something else going on for real. . >> it shows there's a lot of employees at the company who are real, right. they are being frank and honest. look at this comment from an internal site. vaccine hesitancy in comments is rampant. we have all of these sort of documents showing just how much trouble they're having tackling this internally. but take a listen to see what company executives are saying publicly. >> i think overall both sides of the equation, showing authoritative information and limiting the spread of misinformation are incredibly important. a lot of work has gone into this. we have gotten better the last few years as a company. >> the hopes of saying if you drink bleach, we take that down. thousands of content like that we have had to take down >> we put warning labels on tens of millions of pieces of content. and we have pushed 2 billion people to accurate health informa

cnn's donie o'sullivan has more from capitol hill. >> reporter: frances haugen is facebook's worst nightmare. she proved to be an extremely articulate and compelling witness, really effectively breaking down these quite technical, quite difficult details about algorithms and how these platforms work and really have the senators gripped. have a listen. >> facebook's own research shows that. the kids are saying -- kids are saying, i am unhappy when i use instagram and i can't stop. kids who are bullied on instagram, the bullying follows them home. it follows them into their bedrooms. the last thing they see before they go to bed at night is someone being cruel to them. or the first thing they see in the morning is someone being cruel to them. i believe facebook's products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy. the company's leadership knows how to make facebook and instagram safer, but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people. congressional action is needed. they won't solve this crisis without your help. >> reporter: and

and there he is, donie o'sullivan. good to see you. so sophie spoke with you.willing to testify about her experience at facebook in front of congress? >> yeah. sophie is willing to testify. she also told us she has handed over some documents about facebook. she wouldn't officespecify whica law enforcement agency. but she is eager to speak and as you heard share her story. >> i mentioned another whistleblower right before your reporting, frances haugen. we have been talking -- we have been reporting on her for the past week or so. she is meeting with facebook's oversight board in the coming weeks. how do you think that's going to go? >> yeah, it's going to be interesting. i am sure facebook given all that happened last week and all the attention they got negative press, they would like there all to go away and for us to forget about frances haugen. but she in the next few weeks is due to appear before parliament in the u.k. i believe she is being to brussels. she is also going in front of that facebook oversight board, a quasi independent board of experts that f

cnn's donie o'sullivan has more. >> reporter: facebook had a nightmare day on monday with all of itslatforms going offline. facebook, instagram and what's app were down hours through monday. now the headache for the company moves here to washington, d.c., where later today on tuesday, the whistleblower who left the company back in may will be testifying before the senate. we saw earlier in the week she spoke to "60 minutes" where she outlined how she said facebook was damaging democracy, and bad for elections, and bad for the mental health of children. we have her testimony, her opening statement of her testimony that she will be delivering later today. here is some of what she says in it. facebook wants you to believe in false choices. they want you to believe you must choose between connecting with those you love online andier personal privacy. that in order to share fun photos of your kids with friends, you must be inundated with misinformation. they want you to believe that that is just part of the deal. >>> she says that she doesn't want to hurt facebook. she doesn't want to hur

let's get to cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan. you've been covering this a long time.et's begin with something that happened in the background yesterday, that facebook, instagram, whatsapp, they all went down, they're back up this morning, they all went down after really unusual widespread outages. the timing uncanny to say the least, do we have any reason to believe this was deliberate? do we know who is responsible? >> reporter: so, jim, at the moment, we don't know. facebook put out a statement late last night essential saying it was a glitch, a technical air and facebook's computers, they're data centers stopped talking to each other and the reason why it took so long to get back online is this glitch actually affected the internal systems as well. we have sought some clarity from facebook in terms of if they're investigating, say, it was maybe a rogue employee given the timing of this, but we haven't heard back yet. certainly at the moment, there is -- they are not saying it is an attack or anything nefarious of that kind. they appear to be suggesting it is a glit

we talked to donie o'sullivan about their reporting to dig into the roots of anti vax impulses. . >>ng the alarm and asking for protection from parents furious about covid restrictions. >> i'm going to come for everybody that comes at my kid with this stupid, ridiculous mandate! >> and they are on the front lines of the pandemic. why are some health care workers resisting the vaccine even if it puts their heating and jobs at risk? >> this pandemic, this vaccine, this virus, the science is constantly changing. >> but don't you -- again, with all your knowledge as a nurse, don't you draw a line when it comes to a contagious decease? you need an ecolab scientific clean here. and here. which is why the scientific expertise that helps operating rooms stay clean now helps the places you go too. look for the ecolab science certified seal. every single day, we're all getting a little bit better. we're better cooks... better neighbors... hi. i've got this until you get back. better parents... and better friends. no! no! that's why comcast works around the clock constantly improving america's

donie o'sullivan is back with us for more.> yeah, that's right, kate. i mean, this tone he's taking on is almost quite trumpian in the sense that, you know, attacking the media rather than engaging on the substance. we've heard this over the past week from one of fullback's spokespeople, also another executive over the weekend suggesting that the media were doing these stories because they were jealous of fullback in some way. i guess it's all something that fullback's zuckerberg wants us talking about this sort of idea than the actual issues. have a listen to what he said on the conference call yesterday. >> criticism helps us get better, but my view is that what we are seeing is a cord nated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company. the reality is that we have an open culture where we encourage discussion and research about our work so we can make progress on many complex issues that are not specific to just us. >> he talks about good-faith criticism but a lot about bad-faith argumen

zuckerberg's statement touts facebook's strides and transparency and research but as donie o'sullivanreports, zuckerberg avoids the most troubling parts of the whistleblower's revelations. >> left alone, facebook will continue to make choices that go against the common good. >> reporter: mark zuckerberg fights back after the blistering testimony of his former employee frances haugen who alleged the social media giant is knowingly hurting its users and the country. the facebook ceo posting a 1300-word response claiming at the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. that's just not true. a top senator investigating facebook says zuckerberg should do his explaining to congress. >> if he has disagreements with frances haugen or the whistleblower, if he wants to explain these documents, thousands of them, his own research and reports that show how they are putting profits ahead of people and endangering children, he should come tell it to our committee and to the american people himself. >> reporter: facebook described haugen as a low-l

. >> okay, donie o'sullivan, thank you very much for laying all that out for us. we have a technology reporter for the "wall street journal" who covers facebook and lisa stroman, a clinical psychologist and founder of digital citizen academy. lisa -- dr. stroman, i should say, we have spoken about this in the past and in the past you have said that what facebook is doing is criminal, in the fact that it amplifies the most inflammatory content and then hides, by design, how and why it's doing that. so, what did you learn today from this whistle-blower? >> essentially, the things that we thought were going on are definitely going on. and i think that zuckerberg and the team has been able to hide behind this veil of technology not being able to let people in, building his own kind of self-ethics team, trying to keep congress away from looking under the hood, and to me, this is just a tip of the iceberg. the kids are one thing. the public is another. and this is a human interest case where we look at and see, it's not just the kids that are being harmed. our lives and

cnn's donie o'sullivan is joining me. this whistleblower allegation very serious. what's going on.ll of a sudden, we're not even seeing facebook for hours. >> that's right, wolf. and central to that is damning allegations of the potential negative impact on young people's mental health that instagram and facebook can have. a warning to our viewers that this story contains details of eating disorders that some viewers may find disturbing. eternically starved. i have to be thin. skin and bone. all instagram pages the algorithm suggests an account registered to a 13-year-old girl should follow. >> what we did was to create a 13-year-old who expressed interest in weight loss and dieting and within a day, she was flooded with recommendations for accounts concerning eating disorders and personal injury. >> and what's super tragic is facebook's own research says, as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed and it actually makes them use the app more. and so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and mor

joining us now cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan. i'll ask you to be a human recoder here.ake me through item by item what mark zuckerberg said and fact-check it for us. he said if we wanted to hide our results, why establish an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? >> yeah. so this was a very long essay he wrote last night on the platform. this is by far the most laughable claim. they are cherry picking what research they release. the most obvious example came a few weeks ago. facebook put out a report about the most popular links on its platform in the second quarter of this year. an executive at the time had they brought it out said this makes us the most transparent platform on the internet. that report was for the second quarter. what happened a few days later, there was an actual report for the first quarter of this year but they shelved it because it made them look bad because the top link was a piece of anti vaccine misinformation. so they are cherry picking their research and telling us we are supposed to take them at their w

cnn correspondent donie o'sullivan is live from new york. you've been deep into this story.se documents here. explain that disconnect here, that the company admitting internally that they're having trouble here, while putting a rosier picture out there in public. >> that's right, jim. folks might remember that during this summer when joe biden, president biden had really harsh criticism that he eventually walked a bit when he said facebook was killing people when it came to covid misinformation, an executive hit back strongly and pointed to all the work that facebook is doing on covid misinformation. look at this internal memo, two internal memos from just earlier this year, february 2021, our internal systems are not yet identifying or demoting and or removing anti-vaccine comments often enough. this is 2021, these are something that you might expect to see in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. this is when the company had more than a year at this point to deal with these issues. now, here is what a facebook spokesperson is telling cnn, we approached the challenge of misinf

cnn's donie o'sullivan who has been covering all the facebook drama.k being accused specifically of lying about? >> i think really what we see in this later from senator blumenthal is a lot of frustration. he's been asking facebook for questions about internal research the company has been doing, particularly on its harm to teenagers. and he wasn't getting a lot of answers. then comes along this whistleblower. shows that there is all this internal research and i think blumenthal is saying, why weren't you telling us about this all along, specifically on what he says he believes that facebook lied to him about is how facebook is controlling information being shared within the company. facebook moving in the past few weeks to lock down some pieces of information to prevent another whistleblower like frances hagan. but just to mention that facebook are not commenting on this at the moment. they have confirmed that they received it. no comment as to whether zuckerberg will show up or not. >> in the middle of all of this horrific pr we're also learning face

donie o'sullivan reports. >> we created a 13-year-old who expressed interest in weight loss and dietinghe was flooded with recommendations for accounts concerning eating disorders and personal -- >> reporter: he wanted to see what it was to be like a teenager struggling with an eating disorder on instagram. they set up an account belonging to a 13-year-old girl. the result, instagram's algorithm suggested they follow pages that promote eating disorders, with names like i have to be thin, eternally starved, and skin and bone. >> what is super tragic is facebook's own research says as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content they get more and more deblessed and it makes them use the app more. and so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more p facebook's own research says it is not just that instagram is dangerous for teenagers, it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media. >> reporter: that's whistleblower frances haugen, who leaked thousands of documents from facebook, including the company's own research, like this. a

as cnn's donie o'sullivan reports, lawmakers have a long list of concerns about all of these social mediating young people. >> tic cook, snapchat and youtube on the hot seats on capitol hill. >> why do you need all of this personal data, especially on our children? >> reporter: the platform's questioned about how kids use social media, how they are affected by it and what the companies to do to protect teenagers of america. it's the first time tiktok and snapchat have been called before congress. they were grilled about contact their app suggests to kids. >> i'm sure the articles about the porn stars were accurate and fact checked and the tips on why you shouldn't go to bars alone are accurate and fact check bud that's not my question. and this is about whether it's appropriate for children ages 13 and up as you've certified. >> absolutely. and senator, i think this is an area where we're constantly evolving. if there are any instances where these publishers are surfacing content to an age cohort that is inappropriate, then they will be removed. >> reporter: one big message, we're not fac

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as donie o'sullivan reports, that is sparking yet another problem for the social media giant. >> facebook'sch shows that kids are saying -- kids are saying, i am unhappy when i use instagram, and i can't stop. >> reporter: powerful testimony on capitol hill today from frances haugen. the facebook whistleblower who left the company in may and took with her thousands of pages of internal company documents, including facebook's own research about the harms its technology causes teenagers. >> kids bullied on instagram, the bullying follows them home. follows them into their bedrooms. >> i think we're going to look back 20 years from now and all of us are going to be like, what in the hell were we thinking when we recognize the damage that's done to a generation of kids. >> reporter: haugen's call to action, it's time for congress to vote to regulate facebook. >> the company's leadership knows how to make facebook and instagram safer, but won't make the necessary changes because they've put their astronomical profits before people. congressional action is needed. they won't solve this crisis wit