This week, we present SmarterMarkets™ Encore: Ideas Worth Repeating. We’re bringing back an older Summer Playlist episode from 2023 with Frances Haugen. Frances is an advocate for accountability and transparency in social media and the author of the memoir, The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook.

This past week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, agreed to an $18 billion dollars settlement with several U.S. states and territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harm children. They agreed to make a number of changes to its platform and algorithms, including time limits and the ability to choose a feed that is not driven by an algorithm.

In this episode, David Greely sat down with Frances to discuss the algorithms designed to capture our and our children’s attention, their flaws, and how we can incentivize change and build better social networks. We thought it was timely to give this another listen.