A representative for Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., confirmed to CNBC that Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri will testify before Congress for the first time the week of December 6.
“We want to hear directly from Instagram’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms to push poisonous content to children, driving them down rabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, in a statement. “I appreciate Mr. Mosseri’s willingness to testify before the Subcommittee and hope that he would support specific legislative reforms and solutions, particularly in the Subcommittee’s extremely powerful algorithms.”
The story was initially reported by The New York Times and comes after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked thousands of pages of internal Facebook records to the Senate, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and many news organizations.
According to the documents, Instagram had investigated how its platform impacted the mental health of teenage users and identified adverse consequences for a percentage of that user base. For example, roughly a third of teen girl respondents claimed that Instagram made them feel worse when they felt horrible about their bodies, according to the study. It was also discovered that among youths who had suicide thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users blamed the problem on Instagram.
Since then, the corporation has downplayed its findings, stating that a tiny sample size can’t be extended to the entire user base. However, many lawmakers think that the report was insufficient to establish Instagram could have done more to mitigate the platform’s detrimental effects on underage users. Instagram’s ambitions to launch a specific app for youngsters were halted when lawmakers put pressure on the business.
