After failing all tests for most of the day, a test of ISP DNS servers via DNSchecker.org showed most of them successfully finding a route to Facebook.com at 5:30PM ET. A few minutes later, we were able to start using Facebook and Instagram normally; however, it may take time for the DNS fixes to reach everyone.
On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone says, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.” Mike Schroepfer, who will step down from his post as CTO next year, tweeted, “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible.”
Inside Facebook, the outage has broken nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work. Several employees told The Verge they resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts, though employees can’t receive emails from external addresses. Employees who were logged into work tools such as Google Docs and Zoom before the outage can still use those, but any employee who needs to log in with their work email was blocked.
Facebook engineers have been sent to the company’s US data centers to try and fix the problem, according to two people familiar with the situation. That meant the outage, already Facebook’s most severe in years, could be further prolonged.
*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible
A peek at Down Detector (or your Twitter feed) reveals the problems were widespread. While it’s unclear exactly why the platforms were unreachable for so many people, their DNS records show that, like last week’s Slack outage, the problem is apparently DNS (it’s always DNS).
Cloudflare senior vice president Dane Knecht notes that Facebook’s border gateway protocol routes — BGP helps networks pick the best path to deliver internet traffic — were suddenly “withdrawn from the internet.” While some have speculated about hackers, or an internal protest over last night’s whistleblower report, there isn’t any information yet to suggest anything malicious is to blame.
Instagram.com was flashing a 5xx Server Error message, while the Facebook site merely told us that something went wrong. The problem also affected its virtual reality arm, Oculus. Users could load games they already have installed, and the browser works, but social features or installing new games didn’t.
Update October 4th, 3:37PM ET: Added additional information about the outage.
Update October 4th, 4:15PM ET: Added statement from Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, along with internal Facebook updates.
Update October 4th, 5PM ET: Noted outage is still ongoing, added information about the 2019 outage.
Update October 4th, 5:35PM ET: DNS updates suggest Facebook is closing in on a solution.
Update October 4th, 6:08PM ET: Facebook.com is back online.
Days after he failed to gain enough support in his own party to approve two crucial pieces of his agenda, President Biden on Monday insisted he’s doing all he can as he blamed fellow Democrats and the Senate Republican leader for his legislative troubles.
Following a White House address where he urged Senate Minority Leader to set aside a filibuster on raising the debt limit, admitting to reporters afterwards that he “can’t” guarantee the US won’t hit the debt ceiling, Biden was pressed on why he was unable to get key members of the Democratic Party on board with his infrastructure and social spending agenda last week.
“I have been able to close a deal with 99 percent of my party — two people,” he said, appearing to reference Sens. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who have both vowed to vote against Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package at its current price tag.
“That’s still underway,” Biden said of negotiations.
Joe Biden delivers remarks in the state dining room at White House in Washington on Monday.EPA
“I don’t think there’s been a president that has been able to close deals that has been in a position where he has only 50 votes in the Senate and a bare majority in the House,” Biden griped, despite heading into Friday’s visit to the House of Representatives knowing he needed to move those two senators to forge a deal. “It’s a process.”
The president was pushed further and specifically asked if he was putting the blame “squarely on two US senators for his inability to close that deal.”
“Look, I need 50 votes in the Senate. I have 48,” Biden replied.
Last Thursday, the House was set to vote on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, however that vote was delayed after Democrats were unable to garner the votes to pass it.
Joe Biden takes a question from NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell after he delivered remarks about the need for Congress to raise the debt limit.Getty Images
The back and forth stemmed from a disagreement between progressives and moderates over the budget reconciliation. Progressives vowed to tank the infrastructure bill if the massive reconciliation bill wasn’t passed first, while moderates, specifically Manchin and Sinema, refused to sign off on the $3.5 trillion price tag.
Biden traveled to Capitol Hill on Friday to address the Democratic Caucus, telling members that the bipartisan infrastructure bill would not proceed until Democrats reach an agreement on the larger social spending bill.
While Manchin has offered a topline of $1.5 trillion for the spending bill, Sinema’s topline remains unknown. Both have met with Biden repeatedly amid negotiations.
Biden was pressed on what Sinema’s topline would be on Monday, but he declined to give a number publicly.
The president was also asked what size he personally thinks the reconciliation package should be, to which Biden said he already “laid out what I thought it should be [and] it’s not going to be that, it’s going to be less.”
“Both the Build Back Better piece, as well as the infrastructure piece, are things that I wrote,” Biden said. “These didn’t come from – God love ‘em – Bernie Sanders or AOC or anybody else, I wrote them.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have both supported the progressive’s movement to hold up the infrastructure bill to pass the budget reconciliation.
On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said that while progressives have the advantage right now, negotiations with moderates could come down to what programs are in the bill, when it comes to cutting costs.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (left) and Joe Manchin have told President Biden they will not vote on the bill if certain demands are not met. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
“So here’s where I think the problem is. It’s that when we talk about top line numbers, there’s a lot that is hidden in that discussion. And so the reason why this conversation shouldn’t be about numbers, but it should be about what substantive programs are willing to be excluded,” she said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“But those are the conversations that we need to have, because the thing is that Washington math is notoriously funny and you can make a $3 trillion into $2 trillion, you can make a $3 trillion bill that helps fewer people, etc. And so that’s why we really need to talk about the substance of this,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said.
The budget reconciliation package is not yet finalized, as Biden continues to negotiate with Manchin and Sinema to try and savage as much of his broad spending plans as he can, including provisions to lower costs of child care, higher education, prescription drugs, health care and housing, plus push green agenda items.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has been slammed for claiming the $3.5 budget reconciliation packages “costs zero dollars.”
On Monday, the president said once again that the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill as well as reconciliation are both somehow paid for.
Hours later, during her daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made a similar point when pressed on whether the president admitted the bill didn’t cost zero when he said it would be less than he initially proposed.
“What we’re talking about is how much the top line investments are — which are all paid for,” Psaki said, referencing the $3.5 price tag. “So therefore, it costs zero, no matter what the cost or size of the top line investments are, we have ways to pay for it.”
President Biden reached out to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for help but was turned away. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Psaki added that the plan will be paid for by asking corporations and people of the highest incomes to “cover the cost of these necessary investments” through higher tax rates.
When asked one more time if the reconciliation budget costs zero dollars, Psaki admitted “the plan costs nothing for the American people who make less than $400,000.”
Biden’s comments came following his remarks urging Republicans to vote for raising the debt ceiling or “get out of the way.”
As he faces being unable to pass another piece of his agenda by raising the debt ceiling, Biden put the pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying “it’s up” to him.
Just before Biden’s remarks, McConnell sent a letter to the president telling him Democrats would need to raise it on their own.
“Since mid-July, Republicans have clearly stated that Democrats will need to raise the debt limit on their own. All year, your party has chosen to pursue staggering, ‘transformational’ spending through unprecedented use of the party-line reconciliation process,” McConnell said. “I have relayed this reality to your Democratic lieutenants for two and a half months.”
Biden told reporters that he plans to speak with McConnell about the letter, but still believes the “easiest way to do this” is to vote on what is in the Senate to raise the debt limit.
He criticized Republicans for not voting to raise the debt limit, appearing to call them hypocritical after they raised it three times during former President Donald Trump’s presidency.
“Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president and each time with Democrat support, but now they won’t raise it, even though they’re responsible for more than $8 trillion of bills incurred in four years under the previous administration,” Biden said.
The president later said that the Democrats would take responsibility for raising the debt ceiling, “even though some did vote to acquire the debt,” and continued to push Senate Republicans to vote on the House-passed bill that would raise the limit.
Democrats are able to raise the debt ceiling without Republican support through reconciliation, according to guidance from the Senate parlimentarian’s office.
The process would allow the Democrats to raise the ceiling as its own bill without directly impacting the larger budget reconciliation. The second bill would not jeopardize the larger spending bill, according to the parliamentarian.
Despite that, Psaki emphasized on Monday that the Biden administration is not looking to raise the debt ceiling in a separate reconciliation bill.
“As you know, the reconciliation process would mean essentially starting from scratch. And the point is, why wouldn’t it be the preference,” Psaki said, referring to moving the $3.5 trillion House-passed bill forward. “Why, for everybody involved, Democrats, Republicans, the American public. We have a bill that we could vote up or down to raise the debt limit. It’s a much easier, cleaner, simpler, less risky process.”
The press secretary cited that while Democrats control the Senate by the narrowest margin, the GOP could bring forward a range of amendments for the separate bill, delaying the process further.
If the Democrats decide to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation, it would be the second reconciliation bill of this session. It is unclear if there is a limit to the amount of reconciliation bills passed each session, but they can only include policies that change spending or revenues, according to the House Committee on the Budget.
If they do choose that path, it would not be expected to face much stalling from McConnell as it could easily pass with 50 Democratic votes.
Speaking to reporters following a Monday speech on the fiscal standoff, Biden said he cannot guarantee that the U.S. will be able to pay its bills past Oct. 18 if GOP senators are unwilling to clear a path to keep the country solvent.
“I cannot believe that will be the end result, because the consequences are so dire,” he said. “But can I guarantee it? If I could, I would. But I can’t.”
Biden’s warning followed a speech in which he excoriated Republicans for closing off every pathway Democrats have used to suspend the federal borrowing limit and accused the GOP of playing a “reckless, dangerous” political game with the U.S. economy.
“Just get out of the way. You don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it,” Biden said in his speech.
His remarks come 14 days before the U.S. is on track to default on the national debt with no clear path toward a deal to avert an unprecedented disaster.
Raising or suspending the debt ceiling does not affect the size of the national debt or future spending. It simply allows the Treasury to issue new bonds generate cash pay off expenses approved over several decades by both parties
If Congress does not act to raise the debt ceiling after that point, the U.S. could miss debt payments for the first time in its history and unleash a potential economic and financial catastrophe.
The U.S. could suddenly be unable to fund basic federal entitlements and services — including Social Security checks and salaries for military and federal personnel — as the recovery from the coronavirus recession faces new threats. Interest rates within the U.S. would likely skyrocket and global financial markets could seize as trillions of dollars of Treasury bonds become irredeemable.
In a Monday letter to Biden released shortly before the president’s remarks, McConnell reiterated the GOP’s months-long threat to block a debt ceiling increase.
“Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job,” McConnell wrote.
“Republicans’ position is simple. We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”
McConnell also cited Biden’s previous vote against raising the debt ceiling as a senator during the George W. Bush administration. While Senate Democrats did in fact vote against raising the debt ceiling under a Republican president, they did not filibuster debt ceiling increases as Republican senators have done under Biden.
Schumer also warned Democratic colleagues in a Monday letter that the Senate must send Biden a bill to raise the debt ceiling by the end of the week, arguing that getting too close to Oct. 18 is too dangerous.
While Biden did not close the door on raising the debt limit through reconciliation Monday, he also expressed concerns about opening what could be a procedural Pandora’s Box. Raising the debt limit through budget reconciliation could involve dozens of votes on amendments that could create myriad new problems, he argued.
“Everything else would come to a standstill, but you still find yourself in a situation where at the end of the day, you may have passed something that in fact then has to be undone again by either Democrats or Republicans,” Biden said.
“It’s an incredibly complicated, cumbersome process, and there’s a very simple process sitting at the desk in the United States Senate,” he continued, referring to a bill passed by the House last week that would suspend the debt ceiling through December 2022.
Oil from a massive spill off the Orange County coast was heading south from Huntington Beach early Monday, sending chunks of tar ashore, forcing the closure of Newport Harbor and threatening Crystal Cove State Park.
The spill, first reported Saturday morning, originated from a pipeline running from the Port of Long Beach to an offshore oil platform known as Elly. The failure caused roughly 126,000 gallons of oil to gush into the Catalina Channel, creating a slick that spanned about 8,320 acres. The spill has left oil along long stretches of sand in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach, killing fish and birds and threatening ecologically sensitive wetlands in what officials are calling an environmental catastrophe.
The oil will likely continue to encroach on Orange County beaches for the next few days, officials said. Laguna Beach closed city beaches Sunday night after projections showed the spill reaching Crystal Cove by 10 p.m. That beach is now closed. Officials said Monday they’re seeing evidence of oil on Laguna’s beaches, specifically stretches of sand in the northern end of the city.
“Right now it varies. The oil clusters range from the size of a quarter to just particle-size droplets,” said Kevin Snow, chief of marine safety for Laguna Beach. “Beach closures are needed to protect the health and safety of the public and to allow contractors to begin oil cleanup.”
The Crystal Cove beach had not reported any oil as of early Monday, but officials say that could change depending on the ocean currents throughout the day.
A few miles north, Newport Beach officials closed the city’s recreational harbor Monday morning in an effort to stem the spread of the oil, city spokesman John Pope said.
“We don’t have oil in there right now, so a huge priority is keeping oil from getting into the harbor,” Pope said.
Softball-sized clumps have washed ashore between the mouth of the Santa Ana River and 52nd Street. Much of the slick remains about a quarter-mile offshore, Pope said.
Newport Beach has not closed its beaches, but officials have asked people to stay out of the water. The Orange County Health Care Agency issued a health advisory Sunday recommending that those who may have encountered oil in the water seek medical attention.
A major oil spill off the coast of Huntington Beach, Calif., washed up on nearby Orange County beaches, killing fish and birds and threatening local wetlands.
In Laguna Beach, officials say roughly golf-ball-sized pieces of tar have washed up along Crescent Bay, a beach known for its distinctive cove that runs about a quarter-mile in length where Cliff Drive intercepts North Coast Highway, and Shaw’s Cove.
Two contracted oil-recovery vessels known as skimmers worked off the coast of Laguna Beach overnight to prevent as much of the oil from coming ashore as possible, Snow said.
“The entire city is a marine-protected area, which means we have sensitive marine habitat and wildlife here that is protected, and we need resources to protect this unique ecosystem,” he said.
The Coast Guard is also continuing to recover as much oil as possible. Fourteen boats working Sunday afternoon recovered about 3,150 gallons of oil from the ocean and deployed 5,360 feet of floating barriers known as booms in an effort to protect the coastline, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Oil was also continuing to wash ashore in Huntington Beach early Monday.
Divers are completing an intricate inspection of the pipelines on the sea floor, about 80 to 100 feet below the ocean’s surface.
A 5½-mile stretch of sand in Huntington Beach from Seapoint Street near the Bolsa Chica wetlands to the Newport Beach city line at the Santa Ana River jetty remained closed Monday as crews continued cleanup efforts.
In Huntington Beach, which bore the brunt of the oil incursion Sunday, crews deployed 2,050 feet of booms to try to stop further incursion and protect sensitive wildlife areas, including Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre ecological reserve across from Huntington State Beach that is home to dozens of species of birds. County officials also built large sand berms in the area to keep ocean water and oil from continuing to flow into the habitat, which has already been breached by oil. Officials on Sunday requested additional booms to protect the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.
Amplify Energy Corp., the owner of the offshore oil operation, had recently emerged from bankruptcy, while a subsidiary amassed numerous federal noncompliance incidents.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the cause of the spill and say the timeline for cleaning up the area’s beaches remains unclear.
Cleanup along the shore in Huntington Beach was underway early Monday. Workers in reflective vests combed through the sand — at times on their hands and knees — scooping up oil and placing it into trash bags.
Several oiled birds were being treated at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, city officials said. The Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach and Sea World in San Diego are also poised to accept injured fish and wildlife.
Teams from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network were on the beach at first light Sunday combing the area around Bolsa Chica State Beach and south to Laguna Beach, both in the water and on land, said Michael Ziccardi, director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at UC Davis.
The network has a more than 50% success rate in returning oiled animals back into the environment, he said.
“California is the model for the world as far as oiled wildlife preparedness and response, and we have the best techniques and the best success of any place in the world,” he said.
Officials found three oiled birds Sunday — a brown pelican, an American coot and a duck. The pelican had extensive injuries and had to be euthanized, he said. A fourth bird, a sanderling, was found Monday. There have also been multiple sightings of piled gulls.
Debbie McGuire, executive director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, said her group is accepting online donations to aid in the recovery effort.
Birds are more vulnerable after this type of catastrophe because of their higher body temperature, which is an average of 104 degrees, she said.
“Their feathers interplay with each other to block water from getting in. If something like oil does get in, it breaks the continuity of that feather barrier and they become really cold,” she said.
Ziccardi noted that the public should not try to catch oiled animals. Instead, there’s a hotline set up at (877) UCD-OWCN where people can report wildlife that need help.
“It’s still too early to know and understand the long-term effects of what will happen,” Ziccardi said of the effect on birds and fish in the region.
PHOENIX — Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema said an incident involving a community activist group over the weekend was “unacceptable.”
“Yesterday, several individuals disrupted my class at Arizona State University. After deceptively entering a locked, secure building, these individuals filmed and publicly posted videos of my students without their permission — including footage taken of both my students and I using a restroom,” Sen. Sinema said in a press release Monday morning.
Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) posted video on Twitter Sunday morning, showing group activists following Sinema and others into an ASU restroom.
LUCHA posted again saying, “We wouldn’t have to resort to confronting (Sinema) around [Phoenix] if she took meetings with the communities that elected her. She’s been completely inaccessible. We’re sick of the political games, stop playing with our lives.”
Sinema said, “The activist group that engaged in yesterday’s behavior is one that both my team and I have met with several times since I was elected to the Senate, and I will continue engaging with Arizonans with diverse viewpoints to help inform my work for Arizona. Yesterday’s behavior was not legitimate protest. It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom.”
The documents revealed Sunday show that in 2009 he purchased a $22 million chateau near Cannes, France, with a cinema and two swimming pools, using shell companies that hid the identity of its new owner, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which shared the trove of documents with The Washington Post and other media partners around the globe.
Teachers protest against the COVID-19 vaccination mandates in New York last month.
Mary Altaffer/AP
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Mary Altaffer/AP
Teachers protest against the COVID-19 vaccination mandates in New York last month.
Mary Altaffer/AP
NEW YORK — New York City teachers and other school staff members were all supposed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when the bell rang Monday morning in one of the first school district mandates in the country requiring employees to be inoculated against the coronavirus.
Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a final warning to the city’s roughly 148,000 public school staffers on Friday, saying unvaccinated employees would be placed on unpaid leave and not be allowed to work this week. The city planned to bring in substitutes where needed.
The mandate spurred many teachers to get vaccinated as the deadline approached. United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said 97% of his union’s members had received at least one vaccine dose as of Monday morning.
That’s up from Friday, when de Blasio said 93% of teachers had received at least one shot. The mayor said Friday that 90% of all Department of Education employees had received at least one vaccine dose, including 98% of principals.
Implementing the mandate smoothly will be a test for de Blasio, a Democrat who has boasted of the city’s record of keeping school buildings open during most of the last school year when other districts went to all-remote instruction. New York City is not offering a remote option this year.
The vaccination mandate in the nation’s largest school system does not include a test-out option, but does allow for medical and religious exemptions. It was supposed to go into effect last week but was delayed when a federal appeals court granted a temporary injunction. An appeals panel reversed that decision three days later.
A similar mandate is set to go into effect in Los Angeles on Oct. 15.
Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of Schools Supervisors and Administrators, said that despite a surge in vaccinations last week, some principals were having difficulty finding enough staff to replace unvaccinated workers.
“While we’re thankful that the percentage of vaccinated staff has increased systemwide since the deadline was extended, there are still too many school leaders that have been unable to find qualified substitutes for Monday,” Cannizzaro said.
A group of teachers and other school employees who had sued over the school vaccine mandate asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday for an emergency injunction blocking its implementation. The request was denied on Friday.
Many students and parents support the vaccine mandate as the best way to keep schools open during the pandemic.
“It’s safer for our kids,” said Joyce Ramirez, 28, who was picking her three children up from a Bronx elementary school last week.
Ramirez said she hopes the requirement will lessen the chances of teachers contracting the virus and prompting classroom or school shutdowns.
Cody Miller, a 15-year-old sophomore at a high school in Manhattan, said teachers should all be vaccinated. “I think they should,” said the teen, who got vaccinated himself as soon as the Pfizer shot was approved for people 12 and up. “It’s so many kids, it’s a big environment, you know?”
But Mally Diroche, another Bronx parent, had mixed feelings. “I kind of feel like that’s a decision they should be able to make on their own,” said the mom of three boys between 3 and 12. Diroche, 29, said she feels that masks and other precautions can check the virus’ spread within schools.
Some educators have reservations about the mandate but are complying.
Maurice Jones, 46, a support staff member at a Manhattan middle school, said he got vaccinated months ago but he sympathizes with co-workers who have not gotten the shots. “If they’ve got to get tested more they’ve got to get tested more,” Jones said. “I don’t think they should lose their job.”
Roxanne Rizzi, who teaches technology at an elementary school in Queens, waited until Friday to get her first coronavirus vaccine shot.
“I had to do it for the finances of my family,” she said.
Rizzi, 55, had resisted the vaccine because she contracted COVID-19 in November and believed natural immunity would protect her. She said she would continue to protest the mandate.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people should get vaccinated even if they have already been infected by the virus. The agency says COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity and help prevent getting infected again.
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — For a year and a half, New Zealand has pursued a strategy of “Covid zero,” closing its borders and quickly enforcing lockdowns to keep the coronavirus in check, a policy it maintained even as other Asia-Pacific countries transitioned to coexisting with the viral threat.
On Monday, New Zealand gave up the ghost.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acknowledged an end to the elimination strategy seven weeks into a lockdown that has failed to halt an outbreak of the Delta variant, announcing that restrictions would be gradually lifted in Auckland, the country’s largest city.
“We’re transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things,” Ms. Ardern told reporters. “With Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly. In fact, for this outbreak, it’s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases.”
“What we have called a long tail,” she added, “feels more like a tentacle that has been incredibly hard to shake.”
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen talks with CBS’ Scott Pelley on a 60 Minutes episode that aired Sunday.
Robert Fortunato/CBS News via AP
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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen talks with CBS’ Scott Pelley on a 60 Minutes episode that aired Sunday.
Robert Fortunato/CBS News via AP
A data scientist named Frances Haugen has revealed herself to be the whistleblower behind a massive exposure of the inner workings at Facebook.
Prior to appearing on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Haugen, a former employee at the social media giant, kept her identity a secret after sharing thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents to the media and federal law enforcement.
Haugen’s planned testimony this week, as well as the information she shared so far, suggests the company deceived the public and its investors about its ability to deal with hate speech and misinformation on its platform.
“Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she said during the interview on Sunday.
Haugen’s document dump, her testimony scheduled in front of Congress this week, and an ongoing investigative reporting series into the company are potentially pushing Facebook into its biggest crisis yet. The negative spotlight also comes as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly scrutinizing Facebook’s actions.
The Facebook Files reveals major issues
Facebook issued a lengthy statement from director of policy communications Lena Pietsch titled “Missing Facts from Tonight’s 60 Minutes Segment.”
Recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal had already put Facebook in the spotlight. Haugen shared thousands of Facebook documents with the newspaper that went into the creation of the Facebook Files series.
So far the newspaper has revealed how anti-COVID-19 vaccine information flourished on Facebook. It also reported how separate rules allegedly apply to celebrities and politicians on the site. Facebook allowed VIP users to, for a time, avoid penalties for bad behavior, according to the report.
Haugen has also detailed how she says Facebook quickly disbanded its civic integrity team — responsible for protecting the democratic process and tackling misinformation — after the 2020 U.S. election. Shortly afterward came the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which organizers used Facebook to help plan.
“I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,” Haugen told 60 Minutes.
Remember Cambridge Analytica?
Facebook started in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm. Now it’s estimated to be worth $1 trillion. As it has grown, so too have its controversies.
The company faced massive blowback from users, politicians and regulators following the Cambridge Analytica debacle more than three years ago.
A whistleblower named Christopher Wylie went public in 2018 exposing how millions of Facebook users’ personal data was accessed, without the users’ consent, by the U.K. firm Cambridge Analytica. The now-defunct company used this information to attempt to influence several elections around the world, including the U.K.’s Brexit vote on leaving the European Union.
Three years later, Facebook, which has maintained no liability in the Cambridge Analytica dealings, walked away from the entire episode relatively unscathed.
Facebook paid a $5 billion penalty to the Federal Trade Commission to resolve a sweeping investigation into its privacy practices prompted by the scandal, as well as a £500,000 (about $643,000) fine to the U.K. government. But critics said the FTC fine, while the largest privacy settlement in the agency’s history, amounted to a slap on the wrist, given that it equated to about a month of revenue for Facebook.
In 2020, Facebook was criticized yet again for how it regulates political ads and misinformation on its platform, but no regulatory changes came of the criticism.
Lawmakers talk regulations
After the Haugen interview aired on 60 Minutes, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal shared on Twitter, “Facebook’s actions make clear that we cannot trust it to police itself. We must consider stronger oversight, effective protections for children, & tools for parents, among the needed reforms.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., (top left) speaks with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, testifies virtually before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security during a hearing on children’s online safety and mental health on Thursday in Washington.
Patrick Semansky/AP
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Patrick Semansky/AP
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., (top left) speaks with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, testifies virtually before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security during a hearing on children’s online safety and mental health on Thursday in Washington.
Patrick Semansky/AP
For years, Congress has been stuck in an ongoing debate over how best to regulate Big Tech — even as Facebook says its welcomes updated regulations.
In June, House lawmakers introduced sweeping antitrust reforms aimed at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The House Judiciary Committee approved the bills, but they have not been brought for a floor vote.
The scrutiny Facebook now faces could push lawmakers to act.
During a hearing last week, lawmakers examined allegations that Facebook’s own internal research showed its platforms are negatively affecting the mental health of millions of mostly teenage girls.
“This is your company’s reporting. You knew this was there. You knew it was there, but you didn’t do anything about it,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the subcommittee’s ranking member, referring to internal documents about the prevalence of sex trafficking on Facebook.
Facebook has said the research was taken out of context.
Haugen contacted state officials and the SEC
Other regulatory agencies aren’t waiting for Congress.
Facebook is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, which is demanding that the company sell or spin off Instagram and What’sApp.
With these latest allegations, Facebook could soon be facing heat from other regulators.
Haugen and her attorney John Tye shared that she has filed at least eight complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
These complaints focus on the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook, misrepresentations about the site’s role during the Capitol insurrection, and the dangers children face on the site.
Tye, who spoke with NPR, said those allegations involve the difference between what Facebook knew about its platform and what it said publicly. He said misleading investors is a crime under U.S. securities law.
Haugen’s documents have also been shared with the state attorneys general for California, Vermont, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Nebraska, Tye told The New York Times.
It’s unclear whether the SEC or those state attorneys general plan to address Haugen’s complaints.
Editor’s note: Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters.
NPR’s Bobby Allyn and Shannon Bond contributed to this report.
Temperatures in southern California surged on Sunday, but Huntington state beach was devoid of the umbrellas and beach blankets that would typically line its shore.
Instead, public works officials were working feverishly to stop the spread of an estimated 126,000 gallons of heavy crude oil that leaked from an underwater pipeline over the weekend in one of the largest spills in recent California history.
Officials said the first reports of a spill off the Orange county coast had emerged late Friday and on Saturday morning. By Sunday, booms were deployed on the water to try to contain the oil while divers sought to determine where exactly and why the leak occurred. Beaches were closed as teams raced to find animals harmed by the oil and to keep the spill from harming any more sensitive marshland.
The oil created a miles-wide sheen in the ocean and washed ashore in sticky, black globules. On Sunday afternoon, strong fumes from the oil still carried on the ocean breeze.
The oil will probably continue to wash up on the shore for several days and affect Newport Beach and other nearby communities, officials said.
The area affected by the latest spill is home to threatened and endangered species, including a plump shorebird called the snowy plover, the California least tern and humpback whales. Photograph: Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian
The Huntington Beach mayor, Kim Carr, said the beaches of the community nicknamed “Surf City” could remain closed for weeks or even months.
“In a year that has been filled with incredibly challenging issues this oil spill constitutes one of the most devastating situations that our community has dealt with in decades,” Carr said. “We are doing everything in our power to protect the health and safety of our residents, our visitors and our natural habitats.”
The area affected by the latest spill is home to threatened and endangered species, including a plump shorebird called the snowy plover, the California least tern and humpback whales.
The effects of an oil spill are wide-ranging. Birds that get oil on their feathers can’t fly, can’t clean themselves and can’t monitor their own temperatures, said Miyoko Sakashita, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program. Whales, dolphins and other sea creatures can have trouble breathing or die after swimming through oil or breathing in toxic fumes, she said.
There were reports that some birds and fish had been caught in the muck and died. The US coast guard said that by Saturday afternoon there had been just one ruddy duck covered in oil and receiving veterinary care. “Other reports of oiled wildlife are being investigated,” the agency said in a statement.
The spill comes three decades after a major oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange county coast. Photograph: Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian
Huntington Beach resident David Rapchun said he’s worried about the impact of the spill on the beaches where he grew up as well as the local economy.
“For the amount of oil these things produce I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Rapchun said. He questioned whether drilling for oil was a wise idea along some of southern California‘s most scenic beaches. “We need oil, but there’s always a question: do we need it there?” he said.
The spill comes three decades after a major oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange county coast. On 7 February 1990, an oil tanker ran over its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons (1.6m liters) of crude. Fish and about 3,400 birds were killed.
In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara sent 143,000 gallons (541,313 liters) of crude oil gushing onto Refugio state beach.
The circumstances of the leak are still being investigated. On Saturday night, a 17.5-mile pipeline located 80 -100ft beneath the surface and three off-shore oil platforms owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp were shot down, the company’s CEO, Martyn Willsher said, and the pipeline was suctioned out so no more oil would spill as the location of the leak was being investigated.
Daniel Orr and Peter Boucher of the California department of fish and wildlife rushed to collect samples from an area spotted with globs of black. Photograph: Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian
At Huntington Beach on Sunday, Daniel Orr and Peter Boucher, two Senior Environmental Scientists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, rushed to collect samples from an area spotted with globs of black. The scientists sampled sand and water, and unearthed sand crabs still scuttling underneath the lapping tide.
“Our role is to study the spill and its impacts,” Orr said, adding that it’s still too early to know how much of an ecological toll the spill will take.
Dueling friend-of-the-court briefs in the Mississippi case also supported Chief Justice Roberts’s observation about selectivity.
In one brief, international law professors supporting the Mississippi law said that “France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Norway and Switzerland have a gestational limit of 14 weeks or earlier for abortion on demand, allowing later exceptions only on restricted medical grounds.” The brief cited data gathered by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
On the other side, a brief from another set of international and comparative law scholars supporting the abortion providers in Mississippi focused on the countries that it said had similar legal traditions to the United States, notably Canada, New Zealand and Britain, which “permit abortion up to or around viability.”
“Beyond their broadly permissive laws,” the brief said, “these countries also support abortion rights and reproductive decision-making through universal health care, access to abortion services and access to contraception.”
The brief added that recent international trends had been toward easier access to abortion, with more than 50 countries liberalizing their laws in the past 25 years. By contrast, the brief said, overruling Roe “would put the United States in the company of countries like Poland and Nicaragua as one of only a few countries moving towards greater restrictions on legal access to abortion in the past 20 years.”
Professor Ziegler said there was something artificial about the recent conservative attentiveness to foreign nations with roughly 12-week limits.
“People who are anti-abortion are disingenuous about this, because they’re not proposing 12 weeks,” she said. “They’re proposing six weeks, or they’re proposing fertilization.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was confronted by proponents of the democratic Build Back Better bill who followed her as she entered a public restroom on Sunday morning.
A video posted on the Twitter account of Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, an immigration reform advocacy group, shows activists following Sinema on her way out of a classroom at Arizona State University. After she declines to speak to them, they follow her into a bathroom.
“We knocked on doors for you to get you elected,” a woman filming the encounter who identifies herself as Blanca is heard saying after the senator enters a stall. “And just how we got you elected, we can get you out of office if you don’t support what you promised us.”
“I was brought here to the United States when I was 3 years old and in 2010, my grandparents both got deported because of SB 1070,” Blanca said before explaining that her grandfather passed away in Mexico two weeks ago and, due to current immigration laws, she was not able to visit him before his death. “I’m here because I definitely believe that we need this pathway to citizenship.”
In the video, Sinema does not engage with the activists as she is seen exiting a stall and washing her hands.
“It has required a tremendous amount of bravery from this young organizer to fight for her family and tell her story to her Senator,” LUCHA told The Arizona Republic in an email on Sunday. The organization confirmed the interaction happened Sunday morning.
Sinema has “denied our requests, ignored our phone calls, and closed her office to her constituents. She hasn’t had a public event or town hall in years,” the email from LUCHA said, “No one wants to meet with their senator in the restroom.”
“She is the one blocking a path to citizenship, deportation protection, paid family care, climate justice, lower drug costs and so many other things we need,” the email said in reference to the Democrats’ efforts to pass the 10-year $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. The legislation includes funding for free community college, Medicare expansion, extended child tax credit, paid family leave and efforts to combat climate change.
Democrats need the vote of all democratic senators to pass the bill. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema both said they would oppose the legislation due to its high cost.
Immigration reform is not part of the Build Back Better bill after a bid to include it in the legislation was rejected for a second time this week by the Senate parliamentarian.
After it failed, LUCHA announced a campaign to pressure Democrats to include immigration reform in the bill and create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“We are not dignifying this behavior with a response,” Sinema spokesperson John LaBombard said in an email to The Arizona Republic on Sunday.
As of Sunday evening, the video had been watched more than 2.8 million times.
**Related Video Above: Authorities search for Brian Laundrie in Florida.**
(WJW) — One Florida hiker says he saw none other than Brian Laundrie Saturday near the Appalachian Trail.
Dennis Davis spoke with FOX News, among other news outlets, saying he swears he saw Laundrie, who is currently missing after his fiancé Gabby Petitio was found dead in Wyoming, driving a white truck near the North Carolina border around 12:30 p.m.
“There is no doubt about it. That was Brian Laundrie I was just talking to. 100%. Not a doubt in my mind,” Davis told FOX News.
Davis reportedly saw Laundrie while in a parking lot near the trail, he even had a short conversation with him.
“He said, ‘Me and my girlfriend had a fight, and man, I love her, and she called me, and I need to go out to California to see her,’” Davis told FOX News.
Davis told FOX News that at first he thought Laundrie was on drugs, but that later he just thought he seemed tired.
Davis reported the sighting to multiple authorities, but so far, the Haywood County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s Office is the only group that told FOX News they have searched the area looking for Laundrie. The sheriff’s office also reportedly received at least 10 other Laundrie sightings over the weekend.
Laundrie, who is wanted by authorities, was reported missing by his family last month after he had returned home from a cross-country trip without Petito. The search, which TV’s Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman has even gotten involved in, continues.
Yesterday, Petito’s mother Nichole Schmidt took to Twitter for the first time saying that Laundrie should turn himself into authorities.
A Facebook whistleblower revealed her identity in a Sunday night interview while trashing the social media giant for prioritizing divisive content over safety to garner higher profits.
Frances Haugen, 37, spoke out publicly for the first time since quitting Facebook in May when the company dismantled her unit that attempted to address misinformation on the popular platform.
Before leaving the company, Haugen copied thousands of pages on internal documents — some of which had already been reported on — to back up her claims.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen said on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
“Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money,” said Haugen.
Haugen, a data scientist from Iowa, linked what she characterized as Facebook’s inaction in squashing misinformation to the Jan. 6 US Capital riot.
After the polarizing 2020 election, Haugen said the company got rid of the Civic Integrity unit and disabled some safety features they had put in place to reduce misinformation.
“They told us, ‘We’re dissolving Civic Integrity.’ Like, they basically said, ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now,” said Haugen.
“Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection.”
Haugen said Facebook may be complicit in the Capitol riot due to its disbanding of the Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election.AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File
“As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety,” Haugen said of the features.
“And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”
Facebook told CBS that work undertaken by the dissolved department was allocated internally to other units.
Haugen told host Scott Pelley that Facebook enables divisive content to flourish because of changes it made in 2018 to its algorithms that prioritize content for individual accounts based on their past engagement.
“One of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction,” said Haugen.
Examples of disinformation posted on Facebook.CBS
“But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions,” said Haugen.
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” the woman charged.
Haugen is set to testify before Congress this week. She has already filed reams of anonymous complaints against the company with federal authorities.
In the interview that aired Sunday, Haugen said she acquired a 2019 internal report that details an argument from European political parties over the content dominating on its platform due to its algorithm.
Haugen is scheduled to testify before Congress about Facebook this week.Robert Fortunato/CBS News/60 Minutes via AP
Haugen said the parties “feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook … leading them into more extreme policy positions,” according to Pelley.
In a statement to “60 Minutes,” Facebook denied the allegations that the company encourages harmful content.
“We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true,” the company said.
“If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”
“On Tuesday, October 5, the President will travel to Howell, Michigan to continue rallying public support for his bipartisan infrastructure bill and Build Back Better agenda, which will grow our economy by investing in working families, paid for by repealing tax giveaways to the rich,” the White House said in a statement on Sunday.
The Build Back Better agenda includes $550 billion of new spending in an infrastructure bill and another sweeping package that includes social spending on child care, expanded health care benefits and climate initiatives — largely paid for by increases in corporate and wealth taxes.
“I believe I can get this done,“ Biden said before leaving to travel to Delaware on Saturday. “I support both of them and I think we can get both of them done.”
The president cancelled a planned trip to Chicago last week to remain involved in talks over his agenda.
Biden visited Capitol Hill on Friday to huddle with House Democrats, urging the progressive and moderate wings to find common ground in advancing both pieces of his agenda together.
Asked after that meeting when the bills would be passed, Biden told reporters “It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days, or in six weeks. We’re going to get it done.”
The stench of petroleum permeated the air of Huntington Beach’s Talbert Marsh on Sunday as crews in small boats and sealed inside protective uniforms heaved absorbent pads laden with oil as thick as brownie mix into plastic bags.
A day after a broken pipeline spewed roughly 130,000 gallons of post-productive crude off the Orange County coast, they were part of an effort to clean up oil that had gushed into a two-mile necklace of delicate coastal marshlands — Talbert, Brookhurst, Newland and Magnolia — at high tide early Sunday morning.
By 10 a.m., a rainbow sheen of oil and gooey patches 6 feet across were backing up against yellow floating barriers known as booms installed to facilitate cleanup and preserve the wetlands that remain a critical link along the migratory bird route called the Pacific Flyway, which birds travel from North America to South America.
Workers and city lifeguards also prepared the public beaches for the possible arrival of more oil, raking up kelp and other material that could get in the way of the cleanup.
The scale of the event was a distressing sight for beachgoers such as Bill Grimes, 63, who kept his eyes peeled for dead birds and fish washing up as he waved a metal detector over the sand.
“When are people going to wake up and realize that drilling offshore of Southern California is crazy?” he grumbled.
An oil slick believed to have originated from a pipeline leak has hit Huntington Beach, closing a stretch of beach and raising grave wildlife and environmental concerns.
The incident is being handled by a unified command team led by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Coast Guard, Orange County, and the company responsible for the spill, Amplify Energy of Houston, said Eric Laughlin, a spokesman for state wildlife authorities.
Orange County firefighters deployed booms in seven locations to try to stop further incursion into the waterways. But the oil had already killed or poisoned untold numbers of birds, fish and mammals, despoiling their habitat for perhaps years to come.
A crew from the UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network has been mobilized for any needed rescue and rehabilitation work.
The wetlands sustain a surprisingly vibrant ecology. On Sunday, brackish ponds were rife with great blue herons, brown pelicans, double-crested cormorants and western gulls preening along shores stained brown by oil. Butterflies flitted over knee-high grass soaked in oil. Terns swooped to pluck small fish from the polluted tidal flows.
Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said a broken pipeline connected to an offshore oil platform called Elly caused the spill.
Dave Guido, board chair for the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to research and conservation work, trudged along the Talbert Marsh boundaries taking stock of crews’ progress in cleaning up the worst inundation of oil since 1990, when the tanker American Trader spewed almost 400,000 gallons of crude into the ocean. The vessel apparently punctured its hull on its anchor while mooring about 1½ miles off the Huntington Beach shore.
Then and now, oil that spilled into the sea flowed into Talbert Marsh through an inlet under Pacific Coast Highway designed to refresh the wetlands with tidal flows required for their plants and animals to complete their life cycles.
“Talbert Marsh bears the brunt of these oil spills,” Guido said, shaking his head. “Once again, the resilience of its birds and nursery for fish is being tested.”
Installation of booms across key channels in the wetlands was initially hampered by the force of tidal flows, officials said. But late Sunday morning, crew boss Manuel Perez gazed out across the surface of the Talbert Marsh lagoon alongside Pacific Coast Highway and said, “Things are starting to look a lot better than they did several hours ago.”
The oil spill had reached the Talbert Marsh and some environmentally sensitive wetlands areas by Sunday morning.
Yet beneath the waves, it’s a murkier story.
In studying the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on bluefin tuna spawning in the Gulf of Mexico, a research team discovered that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, block “signaling pathways” that allow potassium and calcium ions to flow in and out of cardiac cell membranes and sustain normal heart rates.
Even very low concentrations of crude oil can disrupt these signaling pathways, slowing the pace of heartbeats. Their study also suggests that PAH cardiotoxicity was potentially a common form of injury among a broad range of species in the vicinity of oil spilled into productive ocean ecosystems.
“It may be weeks, possibly months before we begin to understand the impacts of this spill,” Guido said.
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The Supreme Court is slated to decide on cases related to several hot-button issues during the term that begins Monday, including abortion, gun rights, and school vouchers.
On Dec. 1, justices will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which challenges a Mississippi law that bans most abortions when “the probable gestational age of the unborn human” is more than 15 weeks. Detractors claim a ruling in favor of the law could undermine or even lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Carrie C. Severino, the president of the Judicial Crisis Network, told The New York Times, “There are going to be people losing their minds over this case, whichever direction it goes.”
Another contentious case will be heard Nov. 3, when the court will decide in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen regarding whether the state of New York can order citizens who want a concealed carry license to demonstrate a good reason for having one.
The ruling would also effect concealed carry restrictions in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
In Carson v. Makin, scheduled to be heard before the court on Dec. 8, justices will decide if Maine can exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.
The conservative-majority high court will also decide on challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate, as well as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for immigrants, and a case regarding the death penalty sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev.
Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday defended the court by pushing back against critics who characterize the court “as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways.”
“This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court and to damage it as an independent institution,” he said.
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