Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said on Sunday that the company will launch new tools to divert users away from harmful content, reduce political content, and give parents more control over teenage accounts on Instagram.
Although Clegg did not elaborate on the tools’ details, he told ABS that one of the measures would prompt users who stay on Instagram for long periods of time to “take a break.”
Another advantage would be for teens who look at content that harms their well-being to look at something else. Clegg also noted that Instagram Kids, a service for children aged 13 and under that the company has temporarily suspended, would be part of the solution.
“We have no commercial incentive to do anything but try to make sure the experience is positive. We can’t change human nature, we always see bad things online, we can do everything we can to try to reduce and mitigate them,” the official said.
These new measures come after Frances Hogan, a former company official, revealed internal documents to the press and Congress, which showed Facebook’s secrecy of research into the psychological harms of the “Instagram” platform, among other suspicions of wrongdoing, and said that the company constantly puts its profits above the health of users. and their safety.
The company will conduct an independent data audit of the content it posts every 12 weeks, a move Clegg said Facebook is doing because it “needs to be held accountable”.