During a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on October 5, Whistleblower Frances Haugen called for transparency about how Facebook entices its users to keep scrolling on its apps, and the harmful effect it can have on users.
‘As long as Facebook is operating in the shadows, hiding its research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable,’ said Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team. She left the nearly $1 trillion company with tens of thousands of confidential documents.
‘The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people. Congressional action is needed,’ Haugen said.
Haugen revealed she was the person who provided documents used in a Wall Street Journal and a Senate hearing on Instagram’s harm to teenage girls. She compared the social media services to addictive substances like tobacco and opioids.
Before the hearing, she appeared on CBS television program ’60 Minutes,’ revealing her identity as the whistleblower who provided the documents.
‘There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,’ she said during the interview. ‘And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests like making more money.’
Haugen, who previously worked at Google and Pinterest, said Facebook has lied to the public about the progress it made to clamp down on hate speech and misinformation on its platform.
She added that Facebook was used to help organize the Capitol riot on January 6, after the company turned off safety systems following the U.S. presidential elections.
While she believed no one at Facebook was ‘malevolent,’ she said the company had misaligned incentives.
In response to Haugen’s bombshell comments, a Facebook executive accused her of stealing company documents and claimed she is ‘not an expert’ on the company’s content algorithms.
Facebook Vice President of Content Policy Monika Bickert spoke out in an interview with Fox News on, slamming Haugen a day after she testified to Congress.
Bickert said that Haugen ‘mischaracterized’ the internal studies regarding the harmful impacts of content on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which she presented to to Congress.
