Oct 4, 2021: A former Facebook employee turned whistleblower on Sunday and accused the social media giant of repeatedly prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.
She said that her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints against Facebook with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Frances Haugen, who works as a product manager on Facebook’s citizen misinformation team, appeared on the CBS television program “60 Minutes” on Sunday, revealing her identity as the whistleblower who provided the documents that led to the Wall Street Journal investigation and the Senate hearing in to how instagram was harming teenage girls.
Facebook has been under fire after the Wall Street Journal published a series of stories based on Facebook internal presentations and emails that showed the social media company contributed to increased polarization online when it made changes to its content algorithm, failed to take steps to reduce vaccine hesitancy and was aware that Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls.
Haugen, who previously worked at Google and Pinterest, said Facebook has lied to the public about progress being made on its platform to curb hate speech and misinformation.
She added that Facebook was used to orchestrate the capital riots on January 6, when the company shut down security after the US presidential election.
While she believed there was no “dishonesty” on Facebook, she said the company has wrongly focused incentives.
Meanwhile Facebook released a statement after Haugen’s television interview.
Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said, “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.”
Even before the 60 Minutes interview aired, Facebook Vice President of global affairs Nick Clegg said it was “ludicrous” to assert that Jan. 6 occurred because of social media.
Founder of Whistle Blower Aid, a non profit foundation, John Tye, who is Haugen’s legal representative said some internal documents have been shared with attorney generals in various US states and that as a publicly traded company, Facebook is required to not withhold any information from investors.
Tye said Haugen has also spoken with lawmakers in Europe and is scheduled to appear before the British parliament later this month, in hopes of spurring regulatory action against Facebook. He and Haugen are also interested in speaking with lawmakers from countries in Asia.
