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British policymakers heard on Monday the testimony of a former Facebook executive, who is a whistleblower and has shared multiple internal documents with policymakers, regulators and journalists to help make a case for tighter oversight of the social media giant.

Former employee Frances Haugen spoke before a Parliamentary committee as part of her tightly choreographed campaign to expose internal Facebook research and debates that paint a portrait of a company vividly aware of its harmful effects on society, as opposed to public statements by company leaders.

Here are the highlights from the session:

• Ms. Haugen, in the opening moments of her statement, likened Facebook to an “oil spill” and said government officials must act quickly to avoid further damage. “I stepped forward because now is the time to act.”

• Ms. Haugen said more transparency was needed from Facebook, which she said presented a false picture of Facebook’s efforts to delete hate speech and other excessive content. The company says its AI software has caught more than 90 percent of hate speech, but Ms. Haugen said the number is less than 5 percent.

  “They’re very good at dancing with data,” he said.

• Ms. Haugen urged policymakers to reduce the use of Facebook’s “interaction rankings”, the process by which its algorithm “increases some content more than others based on how much other Facebook users engage with it through likes, shares and other metrics”.

  Ms. Haugen said such a system prioritizes and reinforces polarization and excessive content. “Anger and hate is the easiest way to grow on Facebook,” he said.

• Haugen said Facebook “puts growth above security”, especially in regions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East where the company lacks language or cultural expertise and where the platform exaggerates divisions between users.

  Events in countries where Facebook is banned, such as Ethiopia and Myanmar, accused of contributing to ethnic violence, They were the “opening chapters of a novel that would be terrible to read”.

• John Nicolson, a member of the committee from Scotland, described being subjected to homophobic abuse online. He said this is just one example of the problems social media causes. He cited an internal study from Facebook by Ms Haugen, which found that 13 percent of British teens surveyed attributed their suicidal desire to Instagram.

  “Is Facebook bad?” asked.

  “I can’t see people’s hearts,” replied Ms. Haugen.

Even for Facebook, a company that has wobbled amidst controversy since Mark Zuckerberg began operating as a Harvard graduate in 2004, Ms. Haugen’s comments have sparked a separate backlash and public relations crisis. By putting the company on the defensive, it helped attract political support for the new regulation in the United States and Europe, sparking some calls for Mr. Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook’s chief executive.

Testimony in the UK on Monday is part of the next phase. Ms. Haugen’s campaign against Facebook, a company she says puts “profits on people.” After anonymously leaking internal Facebook research Wall Street Journal He revealed his identity and testified before a Senate committee for an episode on “60 Minutes” earlier this month, culminating in a series of articles that began in September. Documents including slide decks, internal discussion topics, charts, notes and presentations were also shared with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Since then Facebook materials other news organizationsThis resulted in additional stories, including The New York Times, about Facebook’s harmful effects, including its role in the spread. election misinformation in the USA and stocking sections in countries like India.

Ms. Haugen is now making a tour of Europe, which is home to some of the most aggressive tech regulations in the world and where governments are expected to move faster than the US to pass new laws targeting Facebook and other tech giants. After testifying before British MPs, Ms. Haugen is scheduled to meet with officials in Brussels, Paris and Berlin in the coming weeks. He is also scheduled to speak at an industry conference in Lisbon.

“For all the problems Frances Haugen is trying to solve, Europe is the place to be,” said Mathias Vermeulen, director of public policy at AWO, a law firm and policy firm in the United States that was among the groups working with Ms. Haugen. States and Europe.

British policymakers are listening to Ms Haugen’s testimony as she drafts legislation to create a new internet regulator that could impose billions of dollars worth of fines if nothing more is done to stop the spread of hate speech, misinformation, racial harassment and targeting harmful content. children.

Policy ideas gained additional impetus after this month’s murder. David Amess, a Member of Parliament has sparked calls for the law to force social media companies to crack down on extremism.

Later this week, representatives from Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok will testify before the same British committee as Ms.

In Brussels, Ms. Haugen is scheduled to meet with European Union officials on 8 November. Laws that will force Facebook and other major internet platforms to disclose more about how their recommendation algorithms choose to promote certain material over others, and to enforce stricter antitrust rules to prevent companies from using their dominant positions to eliminate smaller competitors. European policymakers are also debating a ban on targeted advertising based on a person’s data profile, which would pose a serious threat to Facebook’s billion-dollar advertising business.

Despite growing political support for the new regulation, many questions remain about how such policies will work in practice.

Facebook’s regulation is particularly complex because many of its biggest issues focus on content posted by users around the world, raising tough questions about regulating freedom of speech and expression. In the UK, the new online safety law has been criticized by some civil society groups for being overly restrictive and posing a threat to freedom of speech online.

Another challenge is how to implement the new rules, especially at a time when many government agencies are under pressure to tighten spending.