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Reporter Details Dark Inner Workings of Facebook — Jeff Horwitz at Harvard Kennedy School

Nov 2021 🇺🇸 Harvard Kennedy School / The Harvard Gazette

In November 2021, weeks after the Facebook Files series ran, Jeff Horwitz discussed the 14-part investigation at a Harvard Kennedy School event moderated by professor Latanya Sweeney, covered by The Harvard Gazette. Horwitz recounted internal research in which the company's own staff associated Instagram use with worsened mental health for a share of teen girls; Facebook publicly stressed that the research was noncausal, a caveat Horwitz accepted while arguing it still represented 'the company's best understanding of reality.' He also described mitigation tools — such as limiting reshares and slowing the spread of the fastest-moving posts — that he said had already been built internally but were left undeployed. TechKids Foundation cites this as the lead reporter's own extended public account of the investigation, delivered at an academic forum, not as an independent study.

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Simon, Clea. 'Reporter Details Dark Inner Workings of Facebook.' The Harvard Gazette, November 2021. Talk by Jeff Horwitz at Harvard Kennedy School, moderated by Latanya Sweeney.

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