A Facebook whistleblower claimed Sunday the social media company repeatedly prioritized money over cracking down on misinformation and hate speech, and said her legal counsels have filed eight complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The whistleblower finally voiced out her frustrations on 60 Minutes Sunday. Frances Haugen, who was part of Facebook's Civic Integrity Team until it was disbanded after the election last year, called out the social media behemoth for putting more importance on profits over public safety.
Haugen said she had become disappointed by what she witnessed as Facebook's lack of transparency about its platforms' potential for wrongdoing and reluctance to address its failures.
A former product executive hired to help protect against election intervention on the social network, Haugen is set to testify before Congress, Tuesday. She has also sought federal protection with the SEC.
Haugen revealed her identity as the person who provided the documents that underpinned a Wall Street Journal inquiry and a Senate hearing on the harm that Instagram is causing teenage girls. Facebook owns Instagram.
Haugen, who previously worked at Google, said Facebook has been lying to the public about the progress the company made to suppress misinformation and hate speech on its platform.
In the interview, Haugen said there were dispute of interest between what was ideal for the public and what was good for the company. "And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests like making more money," she said.
While Facebook has in the past assured it will work to control the spread of hate speech on the platform, Haugen says the social netwok's algorithm actually promotes it.
"I've seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I had seen before," she told "60 Minutes." Haugen said during the interview that she left Facebook in May.
She added that the company was used to help organize the Capitol insurrection on January 6, after Facebook disabled safety systems after the U.S. presidential polls.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Facebook set up safeguards in place to protect against the sharing of false information about the election and its outcome.
But Haugen revealed they took down those safeguards soon after, which helped in the organizing of the riots at the Capitol.
