Frances Haugen didn't hold back during her much-anticipated appearance in front of the American Senate on Tuesday. A few days after she revealed herself as a Facebook whistleblower on American television, she raised serious allegations against her former employer in a hearing. She described it as "one of the greatest threats to the American people, our children and the well-being of our country, and also to people and nations around the world." She said Facebook is "not responsible to anyone" today and puts profit over security "every day". Describing her move to the public as "necessary for the common good", she said she was aware of the consequences: "I know Facebook has unlimited resources that it could use to destroy me."
Haugen accused Facebook of repeatedly misleading the public. "I realized a terrifying truth: almost nobody outside of Facebook knows what is happening inside Facebook," said the data specialist. "The company deliberately hides important information from the public, from the US government and from governments around the world." Therefore, "full transparency" is important. Haugen drew parallels with the cigarette industry: "When we found out that the tobacco industry was covering up the damage it caused, the government acted."
Haugen worked for the internet company for two years and left it this spring.
She took away thousands of internal research documents that became the basis of a series of investigative stories in the Wall Street Journal.
It gave a picture that the group was aware of the dangers associated with its platforms, but that it had done little.
Facebook is under massive pressure
Speaking to the congress, Haugen said, “The documents I have shared prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled us about its internal research about child safety, its role in spreading hate speech and polarizing messages, and so many other things revealed. ”Facebook shapes“ our perception of the world through the choices of information we see ”. So far, however, only the Internet company itself knows how to personalize the users' newsfeed. The whistleblower called for regulation that would force the company to be more transparent, for example by giving external researchers full access to Facebook data. In contrast to what Facebook has shown, the problems are "solvable".
Facebook has firmly denied the allegations. However, the company has come under massive pressure from the revelations. There have been calls for stricter regulation of online platforms for years. Instagram and other platforms that rely on users to present themselves are repeatedly criticized for not providing minors in particular with adequate protection from the disadvantages - such as cyberbullying or psychological problems. Most recently, after a wave of criticism, Facebook put the development of an Instagram version for children on hold.
The Facebook group recently struggled with a number of problems: The services Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp were affected by a breakdown lasting several hours on Monday - billions of accounts could not be accessed.
Facebook blamed a faulty reconfiguration of routers for the total failure of the platforms and apologized to the users.