Facebook Under Fire as Whistleblower Reveals Harmful Practices
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Facebook is experiencing a historic crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, who released thousands of internal research and documents, testified before the Senate about the company’s impact on the public and brought to light how the tech giant “chooses profits over safety.”
Haugen’s revelations from her time working as a product manager on the civic integrity team for the world’s largest social network have sent shockwaves through Washington and provide a convincing argument that Facebook has not been completely transparent with the public and their investors.
On October 5th, Haugen testified before the U.S. Congress that Facebook was a catalyst in spreading vaccine misinformation and also complicit in harming the mental health of some young users.
“I’m here today because I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” said Haugen during her testimony.
Haugen emphasized in her testimony that congressional action is needed to solve this crisis, calling on lawmakers to place limitations on social media platforms to protect the public or to step in with stricter oversight of the company.
The Facebook controversy seemed to unite congressional Democrats and Republicans against the evident societal harm of Big Tech. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R- Tenn.) responded to Haugen’s claims by acknowledging that Facebook knew they were harming the public. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D- Conn.) noted that the damage to self-worth inflicted by Facebook “will haunt a generation.”
“If you closed your eyes, you wouldn't know if it was a Republican or a Democrat," Blumenthal said in a press conference following the hearing. “Every part of the country has the harms that are inflicted by Facebook and Instagram.”
Haugen revealed herself to be the source of a series of leaks during an interview for “60 Minutes” on October 3. In the bombshell interview, Haugen claimed that the company continuously prioritizes profit over the safety of its user base. Her leaked documents reveal that Facebook knew how particularly toxic Instagram was for teenage girls, but decided to not respond to their findings in order to protect their own financial interests.
A separate leaked document indicates that Facebook was aware of how its family of apps serve as a dominant source of hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation, and were used in organizing the January 6 insurrection in Washington and launching a genocide in Myanmar in 2018.
“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and is causing ethnic violence around the world,” said Haugen, emphasizing the violence and societal division exacerbated by Facebook.
In a letter posted just hours after the hearing, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that Haugen was painting a false picture of the company, and refuted many of Haugen’s prior claims that Facebook was ignoring its own internal research.
“Many of the claims don't make any sense," he wrote in a Facebook post. "If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space — even ones larger than us?”
Facebook's whistleblower problems were compounded when an outage of their family of apps took place on October 4th, at the height of online discussion over Haugen’s allegations. For about 5 hours, the 3.5 billion users of Facebook’s services, including Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Oculus, were unable to access the platforms. Once back online, the consequences were catastrophic for the company. According to the Guardian, “$50 billion was wiped off the company's market value by jittery investors.”