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A former Facebook product manager turned out to be the whistleblower who leaked a wealth of research on the company, plunging the social media giant into crisis and filing a slew of complaints with federal regulators.
Frances Haugen, who appeared on Sunday night on 60 minutes, said she was so appalled by the company’s behavior that she copied a mountain of internal documents to make sure the wrongdoing could not be buried.
“What I saw on Facebook over and over again was that there was a conflict of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” she told host Scott Pelley.
“And Facebook, time and time again, has chosen to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”
Haugen, 37, had worked for other big tech companies like Google and Pinterest. But Facebook was in a class of its own, she said.
“I saw a bunch of social media and it was a lot worse on Facebook than anything I had seen before,” she said.
Haugen added that she initially joined the company in mid-2019 on the condition that she could work on combating disinformation. She had lost a friend in a rabbit hole of white nationalism across social media and wanted to help turn things around.
“It’s one thing to study disinformation, it’s another to lose someone,” she said. The Wall Street Newspaper. “A lot of people who work on these products only see the positive side of things.”
She was assigned to their Civic Integrity team, made up of around 200 people. The team was disbanded in December 2020, shortly after the end of the presidential election.
“When they got rid of civic integrity, that was the moment I was like, ‘I don’t believe they’re willing to invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,” “he said. said Haugen. 60 minutes.
After secretly copying reams of internal documents from Facebook’s servers, Haugen, who left Facebook in May, has become the primary source of The Wall Street Journalfrom the “Facebook Files” series.
The Newspaper was going to publish a series of 10 articles based on the thousands of documents she had provided them. The evidence alleged, among other things, that Facebook was actively deceiving its investors and the public about its success in reducing hatred and disinformation on the platform.
Documents also showed that employees warned their supervisors against the violent use of the platform by human traffickers in the Middle East and armed militant groups in Ethiopia. The company took little or no action.
“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” Haugen said.
Another story in the series reports that Facebook has known for years, based on internal research, that Instagram is actively harming teenage girls and has done nothing to address the issue.
“Facebook’s own research indicates that it’s not just that Instagram is dangerous for teens…” Haugen told Pelley. “It’s definitely worse than other forms of social media. “
More than anyone else, Haugen said, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a responsibility to put Facebook’s all-important algorithm above the common good, she said.
“I have a lot of empathy for Mark, and Mark never set out to create a hateful platform,” Haugen explained in the Sunday night interview. “But it has made it possible to make choices where the side effects of those choices are that hateful and polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.”
She feared that her colleagues would feel that she had betrayed them. Before Haugen left Facebook, her last post on the company’s internal social network, which she typed into the search bar, read, “I don’t hate Facebook. I like Facebook. I want to save it. “
She is now scheduled to testify in the Senate Tuesday morning at a hearing titled “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower.”
And in what could be the most damaging blow to Facebook, Haugen’s attorneys have filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggesting she misled investors about what she was doing to fight disinformation, hate and other problematic content on the site.
Although some fear that Haugen is in danger of retaliation from the company, his lawyer, John Tye, has dismissed the fact that during the 60 minutes segment.
“The Dodd-Frank Act, passed over 10 years ago at this point, created a whistleblower’s office within the SEC,” said Tye, known as the founder of Washington’s legal group Whistleblower Aid. . This office will protect Haugen as she continues to communicate and share documents with the agency, he said.
In a statement to 60 minutes, Facebook said, “We continue to make significant improvements to combat the spread of disinformation and harmful content. To suggest that we encourage bad content and that we do nothing is just not true. “
A website unveiled by Haugen says she is the daughter of two professors who was born in Iowa and holds an MBA from Harvard. “We can have social media that we enjoy and that brings out the best in humanity,” it read.
Haugen said she would like to cooperate with state attorneys general, as well as European regulators. It will push the company to make its research more transparent, to simplify its systems and to limit the promotion of content based solely on the emotional engagement of users.
“While working on Facebook, Frances became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company was making to prioritize its own profits over public safety, thus putting people’s lives at risk.” , indicates his site. “As a last resort and at the risk of her life, Frances took the courageous act of denouncing Facebook.”
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